Who remembers that movie in between Batman and Batman Returns that introduced Max Shreck and had Clayface as the villain. No? Well… now it kind of exists.
If you haven’t read Batman: Resurrection by John Jackson Miller, there are some minor spoilers ahead.
Batman: Resurrection is set between the two Burton films. Bruce and Vicki Vale (the love interest from the 1989 movie) are still sort of together, and Gotham is recovering from the Smilex gas attack in the first film. That attack is how this story’s Clayface comes into existence. He begins as a Smilex victim in a coma on a dodgy ward in Gotham Hospital — a dodgy ward with an even dodgier doctor, but going too far into that would drift into spoiler territory.
We also get a plot involving Clayface cosplaying the Joker, which anyone who played the Arkham games or watched the animated movie may find familiar.
What doesn’t work quite as well are lines like “Batman thought.” This is why I think superhero stories are best suited to visual mediums — comics or film — where internal monologue doesn’t feel quite so clunky.
So where does this sit? It has that “empathise with the baddie” streak of the Burton movies. In my mind, this book would have made a great straight‑to‑VHS film slotted between the two movies. The Clayface/Joker switch would have allowed a Jack Nicholson sound‑alike to step in, and some of the fight scenes feel like they’d work best in animated form.
It’s that kind of easy read. Not essential by any means, but fun.