The multiverse.
Entire universes sitting atop one another, separated by their own unique vibrational
frequencies.
Existing within an endless white void, these worlds hum together in the symphony that is
all reality, but behind the scenes is an all powerful conductor whose guiding hands shaped
all there ever was.
The DC multiverse is one of the most complex, but also one of the most interesting things
in all of comic books, but there’s a lot more to it than just a bunch of worlds and
dimensions.
So today, I want to break down the origin of the DC Comics multiverse and in the process,
uncover not only the highest power in all of DC, but maybe all of fiction itself.
It’s a big task, but I think I’m up to the job
bat.
However, I need to make it very clear that there’s not just one multiverse in the realm
of DC Comics.
As we’ve seen in the shows, creator interviews, and even the comics themselves, there are
MULTIPLE multiverses.
Yet for the purposes of this video, I'm strictly going to be talking about the main canon multiverse
of the current DC comic books.
We good?
Good.
The opening narration of the iconic book, Crisis on Infinite Earths, walks us through
the origin of the multiverse.
“In the beginning, there was only one.
A single black infinitude.
So cold and dark for so very long that even the burning light was imperceptible.
But the light grew, and the infinitude shuttered and the darkness finally screamed, as much
in pain as in relief.
For in that instant a multiverse was born.
A multiverse of worlds vibrating and replicating… and a multiverse that should have been one,
became many.”
While this is all well and good, there’s more to the birth of the multiverse than just
that.
Dating as far back as Green Lantern #40 in 1965, we're shown a story that has persisted
to this day.
Before the creation of the Green Lantern Corps, the Guardians of the Universe were the pinnacle
of all life.
They were immortal beings living in a paradise of endless pursuit of knowledge, sport, and
relaxation.
One of their most brilliant scientists, Krona, was obsessed with seeing the origin of the
universe so he built a machine that would help achieve this goal.
What he saw was a large hand holding a cluster of stars and nebulas, but then suddenly, a
large explosion erupted that would have killed Krona if he wasn’t immortal.
This was the Big Bang and it lead to the creation of the multiverse and its doppelganger, the
Antimatter Universe.
For a time, it was said that the act of viewing the creation of the universe is what sparked
the bang, but this has since been retconned.
Yeah, this idea has played out time and time again in the DC comics and heck, even the
Justice League Unlimited cartoon, so details have changed over time.
Even characters like the Anti-Monitor and Volthoom, the First Lantern have actively
tried to create the multiverse in their image by BECOMING this hand of creation.
However, it turns out that this hand might not be a singular entity, but rather something
greater.
Take this page of the Multiversity series.
We see that in the beginning of all things, there was nothing.
All that existed as an endless white void until a flaw popped into being.
By relating itself to its flaw, this endless white void named itself Monitor-Mind the Over-Void
and it contained the flaw inside of a bottle where the flaw then erupted into the multiverse.
Now later in that same issue, we once again see the hand of creation, but this time instead
of a bunch of stars and nebulas, the hand is holding the bottled multiverse.
Despite being perceived as an endless white void, the surrounding environment in this
shot of the hand clearly has a lot more going on, but this still begs the question, what
IS this hand?
Originally, this was believed to be The Presence, the creator of all things in the DC multiverse.
He is a supremely powerful being that is as endless as he is mysterious.
However, we later found out that the DC multiverse was created by a totally separate being of
immense power named Perpetua.
Alongside the multiverse, Perpetua created three sons, the Monitor, the Anti-Monitor,
and the World Forger.
Shortly after their birth, the Monitor asks Perpetua what she held in her hand to which
she replied, a multiverse.
And of course, we once again saw that classic hand motif, indicating that it’s her hand
that we’ve been seeing time and time again, but that’s a major contradiction of what
we’ve already seen.
I mean heck, when creating the multiverse, Perpetua specifically mentions existing WITHIN
the Over-void.
How could she be the hand when the Over-void itself was depicted as being that hand earlier?
Well for that, we’re going to need to dig a little bit deeper.
Because it turns out that Perpetua was creating her multiverse to be used as a weapon against
a higher power called “The Judges of The Source”.
When this was discovered, one of these judges appeared in the form of a massive cosmic bird
and sealed away Perpetua within a sort of prison called the Source Wall.
Following this, the multiverse was to be reborn into a new reality.
It’s also been further supported that there have been previous versions of reality due
to characters like Relic.
He’s a Green Lantern villain that came from a previous incarnation of the multiverse who
kind of was just there once and is never mentioned every again.
If you were absolutely determined to make sense out of the hand of creation belonging
to both the Over-void and Perpetua, it could be interpreted as it being Perpetua’s when
the multiverse was first created and the Over-void when it was rebirthed, but that’s not good
enough for me.
I think that in order to truly get to the bottom of things, we’re going to need to
go one step beyond and look at this in a more meta sense so please try to stick with me
because things are about to get even more crazy than they already have been.
Earlier in the video, I mentioned that the beings above Perpetua are called “The Judges
of The Source”, but what is The Source?
“It was said that in the beginning, the universe was void and without form.
Great energies were born and just as quickly died as that which was formless struggled
to find form and that which was without reason or meaning sought purpose.
Out of this was born that which is eternal, that which is the all and beyond the all.
The Source!”
Sound familiar?
It’s no coincidence that the Source and Over-void appear as similar things.
Writers have stated that The Over-void, The Source, and The Presence are all one in the
same, including the creator of Multiversity and the map of the DC multiverse, Grant Morrison.
Take a look at this interview that Morrison had with IGN.
He mentions that what this truly is, the god of all things, is the white paper that comics
are drawn on.
However, he’s since gone on to say in a later interview that in this endless void,
there exist infinite multiverses.
Out there, would include things like the Marvel multiverse, the Archie multiverse, and every
comic that has ever existed.
This idea of all things being united in a truly infinite number of universes and multiverses
is what one would consider to be the omniverse.
And wouldn’t you know it?
Perpetua directly calls out the Omniverse and she seemingly uses the term interchangeably
with the Overvoid.
It’s my belief that these are all one in the same The Source, The Presence, The Overvoid,
The Omniverse.
They are all one simple thing, fiction itself.
Grant Morrison has long played with the idea of fiction and how we interact with it.
Perhaps the most interesting is the eighth issue of Multiversity called Ultra Comics.
This book is presented as being self aware and alive, completely shattering the fourth
wall and directly addressing the reader.
Take a look at these panels.
I want you to read them for yourselves because it’s much more powerful that way.
So yeah.
Go ahead and pause the video for a second and maybe while you’re there, you could
throw a like and a subscribe.
Yeah?
Okay.
Three, two, one.
So as we read this page, we hear the man’s voice in our head and he later explains that
the book is real because WE are the book and because we are real, then that means that
the story must be real as well.
Multiversity also plays with the long held DC idea that the various universes all communicate
with each other through works of fiction.
That the stories we read are someone else’s entire reality.
After all, if we exist inside of an omniverse then that means that there are literally infinite
possibilities.
There’s a universe where I die right now.
And right now.
There’s a universe where you ate a live shark for lunch and another universe where
you never have to eat at all.
In a world of truly infinite possibilities, is the idea of our entire reality just being
a comic book in some other universe really that far fetched?
But here’s the thing.
Can we hear his voice in our heads if we blanked out the word bubbles?
Can he exist if the reader simply doesn’t read it?
There’s an ancient philosophical question that goes as follows.
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Well I propose this to you, does fiction work in the same way?
By the end of the issue, Ultra Comics as a character dies, but because of the nature
of him being a comic book, the next time someone else picks up the book, Ultra then lives and
dies all over again.
If you think this is way too much of a stretch then we can actually look back TWENTY FIVE
YEARS before Grant Morrison even wrote Multiversity with his time writing Animal Man.
Grant Morrison speculates that the act of reading is crucial in bringing a work to life.
You see, simply creating a story is only half of the job of a work of fiction.
There’s a concept called “Death of the Author” which many people believe means
that the artist’s intent holds no special weight in determining the interpretation of
their writing.
In that sense, the audience can be argued as being just as important as the writer themselves
when it comes to fiction.
This definitely seemed to be on Grant Morrison’s mind because of this clip from his panel at
San Diego Comic Con in 2015 regarding Multiversity.
“I realized that there’s this amazing kind of critical force out there.
Everyone’s talking about this thing and exchanging ideas and coming up with their
own ideas and it seemed really dynamic and exciting, but this whole series is about that
relationship and how its changed and how the barriers between the creator and the audience
have kind of dissolved.”
If we further dive into Multiversity, the main antagonist is known as The Empty Hand.
The common interpretation is that this is the reader and I think that this (pun-not
intended) goes hand in hand with the reader bringing stories to life be engaging with
them.
We first consume media and then we demand more.
At this point, the hand of creation in DC Comics really doesn’t really mean much.
It’s simply an iconic image of the DC Comics history that has persisted to this day, constantly
being reinterpreted or used as a reference in things such as in the JLA | Avengers crossover.
Although it might be an underwhelming conclusion, I think that the most likely answer is that
WE are the hand.
We the readers, the writers, and the overanalyzers.
We are the ones that ultimately give these stories life and in the end.
Well, that’s pretty cool.
I know that a lot of people are probably going to think that this ending is a massive cop
out and I can definitely see it that way, but if you want me to really analyze the DC
multiverse further, I actually have an older video where I go crazy in detail.
So if you liked this, then maybe go check that out.
I also want to give a big thank you to Comicstorian and Owen Likes Comics for doing some voiceover
in this video.
If you liked their voices, go ahead and check them out as well!
But anyway, I hope you learned at least a little something new and hopefully, I’ll
see you next time!