A vague author statement from 13 years ago.
In Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne Vol 1 #2 (2010) we get these very blatant statements that mention the existence of a “Planetime" and a “Cubetime". All of which are blatantly stated to be higher dimensional existences within Hypertime
- Everything begins with Point-time, the mark is all possiblity of what a linetime could become. Space A | Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #2 - 2010
- Planetime represents the encompass of linetimes, and the higher dimension being made out of Linetimes. Plane B | Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #2 - 2010
- Cubetime inhabitants view Planetime akin to flat disks. Space C | Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #2 - 2010
Later on, in numerous different interviews, Grant explains this concept in great detail. Right here specifically:
1st: Is the All-Star line itself a separate part of Hyper-time?
Grant: It could be regarded as that if you like. All-Star is a Hypertime Line which went underground for 20 years and is now coming back into the light.
‘Hypertime’ was the name Mark Waid gave to a concept of cosmic geometry I’d come up with, one bleary night in San Diego – given that the DCU has a Time LINE, the idea started as a consideration of what might exist beyond the Time Line, on the Time PLANE, or even in the mysterious Time CUBE . The theory allowed every comic story you ever read to be part of a larger-scale mega-continuity, which also includes other comic book ‘universes’ as well as the ‘real world’ we live in and dimensions beyond our own. It was also about how the world of fiction relates literally and geometrically to the world of ‘reality’. Some of its basic features have even been echoed in current cosmological ideas emerging from the field of superstring research and M-Theory. Skip the rest of this answer if you can’t be bothered with crazy talk.
We all live in Hypertime – in our 3-Dimensional level of Hypertime, which can be seen as CUBE TIME in relation to the DCU’s LINE TIME, we can pick up comics and leaf through them, flipping in any direction – ‘time traveling’ back and forward through the ‘continuity’ like some new Doctor Who! I have a suspicion, based upon experience, that in HYPERCUBE TIME, there exist intelligences who stand in relation to our 3-D universe as we stand in relation to the 2-D universe of our comic book, film or TV heroes and who can leaf through our lives and times with the same ease we can leaf through Superman’s history but that’s just me. |
Comic Book Biography: GRANT MORRISON
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Grant also explains this in great detail right here:
So they have this notion time is a line, so i thought “So thats basic geometry”. If time is a line so wouldn't that mean that there could be lots of lines on a plane? And so i drew this thing on a back of a napkin to show it to Mark Waid, and it was like a kind of junction, a train junction, with these lines each of which representing different universes, meaning, different comicbooks that contradicted one another, they could all run parallel and sometimes they crossed over, sometimes that Batman who didn't agree with that Batman agreed with him here and fit in a little bit more, so although Frank Miller's Dark Knight didn't actually fit into canon with Batman, what it did is feed some of its energy into the main Batman line to reinvigorate it. So i created this big kind of diagram that was like a loom. And then, i thought okay if that's all the comics, in fact even on that line you can have the Marvel Comics lying running along here, and sometimes it crosses over when Marvel and DC and friends, you've got this beautiful model of comicbooks as a concept as this two-dimensional plane with all these timelines running over one another.
And then, i thought and obviously above that, taking the metaphor of the geometry higher you would have Cubetime, and in Cubetime are people like us that who are able to look down on Planetime with all the comicbook universes from a higher-dimensional perspective.
Which then allowed me to imagine Hypercube time, which would be the kind of entities i was talking to you about from the Kathmandu experience, looking down on our Spacetime as the same flat surface where they can see future, past, present simultaneously.
All of which being a part of Hypertime, which is described by GM here
So that's what Hypertime was was, it was a of geometric vision that would incorporate the real world, and the comic universe, and allow every story that was ever told to be...real? Because they are real you can go pick them up, you know, and whether the continuity contradicts or not the stories remain...real? You know and it was-all my thing And was always get to the next level of what's real and what a comic is rather then trying to pretend that i was telling stories about a world that you just couldn't get to. A special world where Superman lives that's, there is no world where Superman lives, it's on that page, and so that's what i was trying to get at.
With of course, Hypertime tying to the whole convergence thing.
And of course, as of 2014s Multiversity. Grant brings up this cosmology again, and obviously uses it to refer to these higher existences:
he continues. “You don’t need grand theories.
The universe exists on the second dimension and we can read their adventures with Superman going back to 1938, and you can put them all together and look at them from above. We can line up the future Superman with the original Superman and they can see each other, but we can see both of them. For me, all of the interesting stuff,
this super string stuff, is happening between me and the same dimension as this material.” |
Grant Morrison Merges String Theory with Superheroes in DC’s Multiversity
Now, the entire reason why i am bringing up this entire thing, is because of Quantum Supermans describtions of dimensions in Pax Americana. Quantum Supes is seen reading a comicbook. Then tells them that he thinks how the universe would appear from a higher dimensional perspective, flat. Then explicitly tells that that he views the story nonlinearly, then tells them that this comicbook, this fiction, is how a 2-dimensional continuum looks to 3-dimensional entities, then tells them that his existence would view them much like how a 3-D existence would view a 2-D existence. Implying that all dimensions work like that.
I give you two interpretations here, i will lay them out for both of you.
- Quantum Superman views the universe nonlinearly, and isnt inherently a dimensional or R>F transcendence
- Quantum Superman, because of his higher dimensional existence, views the 3-D universe exactly how a 3-D universe views a 2-D continuum (comicbook/fictional)
You pick interpretation 1? Thats incorrect, straight up.
As Grant had already told us a bajillion times already with Hypertime and Mutliversity, higher dimensions perceive lower dimensions as fictional. Making the first interpretation a completely incorrect interpretation of dimensions, that goes directly against not just Morrisons actual interpretation, but also Snyders interpretation, which does believe that the Fifth Dimension also has a metafictional dominion over reality in Justice League #19.
So no, i do not believe the Fifth Dimension is just some useless addition to the cosmology, power scaling wise. And obviously does transcend the 4th dimension viewing it as fiction. Making the “creepy guts-of-a-cyborg architecture" 100% a 5-D structure. Making the Bleed between Universes a
Low 1-C structure.
To answer Deegons question, as of 2022 with Absolute Multiversity (
and Joshua Williamsons works) all of this is still applicable to now.
If you read through all of this, i genuinely thank you.
