Review by Ian Keogh

One Bad Day is a series of hardcovers spotlighting the villains of Gotham and involving the idea of a single bad day, inspired by Alan Moore’s starting premise for The Killing Joke.

Writers Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing set Clayface apart from the remainder of the series as it occurs outside Gotham, in Hollywood in fact, the ideal location for former actor Basil Karlo. He’s old school, and doesn’t understand current Hollywood, but it hasn’t dimmed a desire to rekindle his film career. As he’s now a giant mud monster able to control transformations into other forms, he masquerades as aspiring actor Clay turning up for auditions, yet unable to keep his monstrous side under control. That being the case, perhaps Kelly and Lanzing ought to have realised that he could have taken the actions he does to land a starring role at any time, so rendering much of the first quarter redundant.

Were that to be scrapped, though, we’d be lacking the imaginative delicacy of Xermánico’s artwork. Because the combination of his drawings and Romulo Farjado’s colours is so beguiling it’s a real shock when a scene shifts to the self-centred monster Clayface is at heart. There’s a power to those scenes and to a released Clayface becoming something feral and much bulkier.

Overlook the opening plot hole, and Kelly and Lanzing convince with their portrayal of the Hollywood hierarchy, where everyone is dispensable and takes that out on the person below them in the chain. A succession of murders leaves Karlo in a position of power, and because he believes in film as a genre his intention is to institute a less cynical regime, but he’s undone by hubris.

While very readable, this doesn’t drag the emotional depths of other volumes in the series. Clayface is explained, but at the end of the day it’s really only the location that’s changed, and he’s essentially the same.

All One Bad Day hardbacks are available with a standard cover, while the slimmer comic alternatives come with a selection of rarer variants. All volumes are also available together as a boxed set packaged with a hardcover edition of The Killing Joke.