Not so much, as it was scientist Preston Payne, distilling a sample from the second Clayface (Matt Hagen, more on him here), who triggered his own cellular degradation, forcing him to absorb others and live in a strength enhancing exoskeleton to stay alive. This brought him into conflict with Batman, in these two issues of Detective Comics (#478 and #479, July-August and September-October, 1978) by Len Wein, Marshall Rogers and Dick Giordano.
A decent idea for a character, and an amazing costume design by Marshall Rogers. Sadly, Alan Grant is the only writer who was able to consistently make the character work (Alan Moore's one story with him in Batman Annual # 11 was good, but relied heavily on this original story). Sadly, Grant Morrison did the worst job with the character in Arkham Asylum, essentially making him an allegory for A.I.D.S. that was in poor taste.
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