I, Joker is an single issue DC Comics series published under the Elseworlds imprint about a dystopian future with a religion centered around Batman, from The Joker's perspective.
The Bruce is the 'god' of this world, with a regular tradition of a fight to the death to declare the next Bruce. Iconic Batman villains are resurrected to fight against as part of this tradition. This year, however, The Joker manages to break free and decides to take the fight to The Bruce.
This comic provides examples of:
- A God I Am Not: After beating The Bruce, Batman-Joker tries to tell the crowd he's not a god, but the Cult of the Bat is too strongly ingrained. He's still working on it, though.
- Becoming the Mask: The Joker has had this done to him through the surgery.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:Joseph: I am the Batman! I am the Joker! I am the Batman and the Joker!
- Brainwashed: All of Batman's villains.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: One of The Bruce's tools. Marya refuses to break, though.
- Crapsack World: Gotham City has become everything that Bruce Wayne didn’t want it to become.
- Cult of Personality: The religion based around Batman.
- The Dog Bites Back: Klibon's sick of The Bruce, so he didn't truly erase Joseph Collins's memories, just to piss him off. He even lets Marya go ("Why not?").
- Driven to Suicide: Doctor Klibon's even older than the Bruce, tired, and miserable. So after freeing Marya and smoking the last cigarette on Earth, he ends his life.
- Dystopia: The main setting is one, where the populace of Gotham have become exactly what Bruce Wayne didn't want them to become, revealed in his posthumous video.
- Famous Ancestor: The Bruce believes Joseph Collins, who's been modified into a copy of the Joker, is a true blood descendant of the original Batman. We never know for sure— though he does mention having seen Bruce Wayne in person once, so he might have seen a resemblance.
- Final Battle: A hundred years ago, Bruce Wayne and the Joker had theirs at the door of the Batcave.
- Fixing the Game: It's awfully easy for The Bruce to hunt down the villains when they're trapped in their vehicles (which can be controlled remotely), have cameras following them, trackers implanted in them, and weapons full of blanks.
- Fling a Light into the Future: Decades ago, just prior to a climactic battle with the Joker, an aged Bruce sealed away the Bat-cave, setting up a shield against electronic detection and left a video in the hopes that someone would take up his mantle.
- Forced Transformation: The 'villains' resurrected for The Bruce's ceremony are all surgically-altered and brainwashed prisoners. This year, it's Joseph Collins and four members of his resistance cell.
- Identity Amnesia: The Joker and all of the villains. The Joker gets better, however.
- I Have Your Wife: With the people clamoring for the Joker's blood, The Bruce uses Joseph's lover Marya to try and manipulate him into a one-on-one battle.
- Immortal Ruler: Gotham City has turned into an even more hellish dystopia ruled by the Bruce, a mad old bastard version of Batman who keeps himself alive with organ transplants, cybernetics, and drugs. However, since even such methods have their limits, the Bruce is implied to be a Legacy Character as well.
- Laughing Mad: It is the Joker, after all. Right?
- Older Than They Look: The Bruce is 92 (having won the title at 60), and thanks to Doctor Klibon's organ transplants, drugs, and even cybernetics has the health and vitality of a man a fraction his age.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Joseph, leader of a rebel cell decades in the future, discovers the Bat-Cave, mostly intact.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Joker's eyes are red. Joseph's were blue.
- Reforged into a Minion: The Bruce had Klibon alter captured members of Joseph's rebellion into reprogrammed copies of Batman's old foes in order to perpetuate the tradition.
- Riddle for the Ages: Batman-Joker asks The Bruce who started the Cult of the Bat, but The Bruce refuses to tell him.
- Slasher Smile: Part of Joe's unwilling transformation.
- Spiteful Spit: Marya gives The Bruce one.
- Split Personality: Thank to Klibon deliberately screwing up his mental reprogramming, the implanted personality of Joker doesn't take proper hold within Joseph, and he manages to break through it.
- Split-Personality Merge: Although Joseph's mind is free, the Joker programming has affected him to some extent. Most notably he has some difficulty talking as himself at first, and makes some black humor wisecracks. He even outright says he's both the Joker and the Batman.
- The Starscream: Gordon, The Bruce's right hand man, seems like about what you'd expect from a cult member. At least until he realizes/decides The Bruce has gone insane and tries to wrest power from him. The Bruce throws him to the crowd of fervent, blood-crazed worshippers below.
- Surgical Impersonation: Non-consensual for all of Batman's villains, but consensual for The Bruce, whose mask is his real face.
- The Theme Park Version: "Joker" notes that the personalities implanted in the villains are based on musty old legends. His basically involves violence, black humor, and a tendency toward wild laughter.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Just like the original Batman, Joseph refuses to kill— unless he must, such as when he killed a traitor who knew about the Bat-Cave.
- Worthy Opponent: Joseph Collins was a rebel leader whom The Bruce himself felt might have the wits to beat him, something the cult leader finds perversely exciting. He also becomes convinced that Joe is a blood descendant of the real Bruce Wayne who survived The Bruce's purges somehow.
- You Kill It, You Bought It: How the line of descendency for The Bruce works—on December 21 of every year, his old foes are resurrected (not really), and anyone who can kill one of the villains before The Bruce can has the right to challenge him for the mantle.
