Batman: I, Joker (Elseworlds)

In Elseworlds, heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places - some that have existed, and others that can't, couldn't or shouldn't exist. The result is stories that make characters who are as familiar as yesterday seem as fresh as tomorrow. Set in a dystopian future, in which the true story of Bruce Wayne, his mission as the Batman and his gallery of Rogues has become a sort of cult, defined by an annual ritual in which the Bat must hunt down and kill his villains, a ritual which is televised and revered by the citizens of Gotham who whip themselves into a frenzy urging their Dark Knight - a monstrous being known as The Bruce - to crush and destroy. The villains are ordinary, innocent citizens, kidnapped, brainwashed and surgically altered before being thrust out onto the streets to be hunted and killed.This story is told from "the Joker's" POV - that is, the hapless man who was selected to act as the Joker for that year's ritual. Unfortunately for the Bruce, this particular man is actually a distant, far removed blood descendent of the original Joker - which has equipped him with the internal strength to gradually break-through the conditioning and torture he underwent being transformed into the Joker figurehead.