Football has a funny habit of turning injury lay-offs into origin stories. We tell ourselves that absence makes the heart grow fonder and, somehow, that a spell on the sidelines makes a player stronger, wiser, more determined. Sometimes that is literally true. Gareth Bale spent almost a year in the gym during his early days at Tottenham and came back as a physically unstoppable force, a man who looked like he had been rebuilt in a laboratory and programmed to terrorise full-backs. But usually, the transformation happens entirely in the eyes of the beholder. Fans miss a player for months,…

Let’s be honest: the DCU has been one of the most fascinating, chaotic experiments in modern movie history, and right now Warner Bros. is trying to make lightning strike twice in a row. Lanterns just wrapped up its run on HBO Max, and by all accounts, it was a smash hit. It gave the DCU a much-needed win and generated real excitement for where this shared universe is heading. Now the studio is hoping to keep that momentum going with something far more unexpected: Clayface. On paper, this is a strange choice. Clayface isn’t a household name. He’s not Superman…