Preston Payne

Preston Payne is the third DC villain to carry the Clayface identity. A man afflicted with a painful condition that causes his body to melt and transmit that effect to others through touch, he becomes one of Batman's most tragic rogues — dangerous not from malice but from misery.

Preston Payne is one of DC's most haunting Bronze Age creations, introduced in Detective Comics #479 in 1978 by the legendary team of Len Wein and Marshall Rogers. Over more than four decades, this tragic figure has carved out a place in Gotham's darkest corners, most at home within the grim walls of Arkham Asylum — which tells you everything about the company he keeps. Sharing pages with Batman, the Joker, and Clayface, Payne inhabits the most iconic and unsettling corners of the Batman mythos, with at least one of his appearances earning genuine key-issue recognition among collectors. Eleven catalog appearances may sound modest, but for a character who has endured from the Bronze Age into the modern era, Preston Payne is a testament to the staying power of a truly well-crafted Gotham nightmare.