A couple months back the mayors of Gotham and New York had made a very public agreement to trade the heroes of their respective cities for a week. Part of their reasoning was to see which city had the worst crime still after all these years of having their own vigilantes, the other part was an experiment of sorts to see whether it would be helpful for superheroes to leave their nests and see if they would do better at crime fighting in different cities.
So far, Peter considered the experiment a failure.
It was four days into the week of the challenge and Spider-Man was miserable. He hadn't expected Gotham City to be dirty as it was. He thought that the alleys of New York were rank but when he first caught the whiff of one of Gotham's back streets he retched. In the seedier areas of town the storefront windows were smeared with grime, so much so that he couldn't see into the abandoned buildings. When the challenge was first announced the mayor had told him that Gotham would be similar to New York, that he would do just fine, but after his first night on watch he had felt overwhelmed. The criminals were so much more malevolent than what he was used to; it seemed as if they all had chips on their shoulders and were hell-bent on sharing their pain with the rest of the city. He wondered how Batman was faring in New York, if old Bruce Wayne felt just as out of place in the Big Apple as he did in Gotham.
As he sat on the top of one of Gotham's buildings his Spidey Sense brought him back from his wallowing in self-pity. He swung from building to building, feeling the pulsations through his body grow stronger until he passed over a warehouse that he immediately knew was where the trouble was going down. Spider-Man climbed down one of the walls and peered into a window but all he could see was darkness. He turned around to climb back up the wall, puzzled over why his Spidey Sense had been wrong, when all of a sudden he felt a painful shock. Startled, he lost his grip on the brick of the building and fell, the night sky growing larger in front of his eyes until it disappeared.
Peter Parker awoke to a thumping on his chest. He coughed and opened his eyes wearily. At first he couldn't fully make out who (or what) he was looking at, but when his mind finally caught up with his eyesight he panicked. Looking down at him was a slender man with thick white paint smeared over his face, hair dyed a sickly green shade falling in front of his eyes, and bright red lipstick on his thin lips. Spider-Man had heard rumors of this man but he hadn't believed that he would come face to face with him during his stay in Gotham; as far as he knew the guy really only had it out for Batman. But there he was, the Joker, looking him straight in the eye. Peter felt his mouth go dry and his muscles tense up. From what he had heard, the Sinister Six had nothing on this guy and the twisted crimes he committed. He tried to move, but of course he was pinned down to the table he was lying down on by thick leather straps.
"Good morning, Spider-Man," the Joker said, spitting out his words.
"Morning?" Spider-Man said timidly. Now he was worried. So he had been past out all night? What had happened in Gotham while he was unconscious?
"Yes it's about, oh I don't know, ten?" The Joker chuckled to himself. "Bet you're wondering if Gotham is in shambles now, aren't you?"
"No," Peter said, speaking slowly so that the Joker couldn't hear the trembling in his voice. In New York Spider-Man was familiar with his enemies, men who were angry at the city and wanted to take revenge on her citizens. He had never truly come up against a villain who wanted to take out his insanity on society in general.
"Oh, Gotham's still standing all right. What do you think of her so far? Beautiful, isn't she?" the Joker asked.
"She's all right," Spider-Man said. The Joker nodded and continued to look at him with a small smile on his lips. What was this guy's deal? Was he even going to do anything? Spider-Man wriggled his wrists around. Maybe if he was able to get them free he could web this guy up so he at least wouldn't hurt him.
"You're probably wondering why I have you here, Mr. Spider-Man," the Joker said. At that Peter's blood ran cold. He was done for. When he didn't respond, the Joker continued: "I need to make a statement to the country. I need to show them that I am not only the enemy of Batman and Gotham, but also the United States and what it stands for." He looked around the room wildly, the sick grin on his face spreading. "Do you know where we are?"
"No," Spider-Man said. He was physically shaking now and he couldn't keep the terror out of his voice.
The Joker put his face right in front of Peter's. He spit out, "We are in the basement of the laboratory where I fell into that vat of chemicals, making me the handsome man I am today. And you know what? The same is going to happen to you."
"No, please. Don't do this," Spider-Man said.
"If I disfigure the Amazing Spider-Man, America is finally going to see that I am a force to be reckoned with. Think of what they'll give me to appease me, think of the titles I'll have and the things I'll own if they think that that will stop me from carrying out my deeds on the innocent," the Joker muttered as he began to move the table Spider-Man was lying on. He wheeled the table through a pair of double doors on one side of the room, carting Peter out of the dark room they had previously been in into a fluorescent-lit hall. Everything was whitewashed, even the elevator that the Joker pulled him into. As they ascended, the Joker hummed to himself and smiled down at the superhero.
Peter began to resign himself to the fact that he was going to be disfigured and humiliated if he didn't die in the vat of chemicals that he was inevitably going to be dropped into. He closed his eyes in an attempt to ignore the horrifying face that wouldn't stop looking at him. Finally the elevator door opened and the Joker pulled the table down another brightly lit hallway. Peter thought about how much of a failure he was, that he had left Gotham unguarded for a night and it was probably all over the news. Even worse, he would probably have to become reclusive when he arrived back home because of how he would look. Aunt May thought that he was on assignment for the paper in Gotham; what would she do with herself if she never saw him again? What would he do with himself? He wriggled his wrists even more in a desperate attempt to hopefully save himself.
Finally the Joker wheeled Spider-Man into an abnormally large room. The chemicals that bubbled in the large clear tubs in the room were a bright green. The Joker pushed the table up a metal ramp to a plank that overlooked one of the vats. As he began to push Spider-Man onto the plank and over the edge of it, Spider-Man finally got one wrist out of the straps that chained him down and shot a web up to the ceiling of the room. The Joker pushed him and the table over but he swung himself out of harm's way, barely missing the chemicals. He could hear them hiss as they ate up the wheels on the legs of the table. He heard the Joker's screams and curses as he swung to the opposite side of the room. When he hit the wall he pulled at the web so that he could crash to the ground and break the table into pieces. The fall jarred him and as his senses came back to him he looked around for the Joker so that he could confront him and hopefully turn him back into the police.
The room was empty save for himself now. The worst villain in Gotham had escaped.
For the remainder of his time in Gotham Spider-Man was very jumpy, terrified that the next criminal he would encounter would be the Joker, ready to take revenge on him and pour him into the chemicals as planned. However, he never saw the man again.
When it was time for him to go home, there was a public celebration for both him and Batman at the reception hall of one of Gotham's nicest hotels. Spider-Man took pictures and sat while the mayor gave a speech about how the challenge had been helpful for both Gotham and New York, but he wasn't mentally there. All he could think about was how the Joker might appear at any moment, maybe the second he left the room. As he was leaving, Batman came up to him and shook his hand. He asked the young superhero if he was willing to trade places permanently, that New York had been a cakewalk compared to his hometown and that he had enjoyed Broadway when he wasn't patrolling. Spider-Man shook his head in disbelief and responded curtly, "Not a chance in hell."