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General DC Comics Discussion Thread

Antvasima said:
Wouldn't Joshua Williamson unwisely establishing The Great Darkness/Lucifer suddenly being vastly superior to The Overvoid/The Source/Yahweh/The Light in DC Comics (and as such turning the entire setting into an absolutely morbid and hopeless dystopia) be a massive contradiction with what Grant Morrison established about The Overvoid being the ultimate blank canvas above absolutely all else? I am not comfortable with letting a hack writer like Williamson suddenly retroactively overwrite what Morrison established, rather than keeping the cosmologies separate.
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Elizio33 said:
Well, the fact that Overvoid is primarily the ultimate blank canvas surpassing everything has been established exclusively in Morrison's interviews rather than in the comics. In the comics, the Overvoid has been depicted as a conscious living void of immaculate perfection, beyond the Source Wall where thought itself ceases to be. It has been described as non-dual, but its relationship with the flaw is described as a duality defining existence and non-existence. Anyway, my point is that if we don't include most of Morrison's claims, there would be no notable contradictions with Williamson's approach to the DC Universe. I mean, if we made an exception with Morrison and Snyder's cosmologies despite the contradictions, then why not? Also, we shouldn't include Lucifer and Yahweh in this, Vertigo was more apart from DC and even though authors like Scott Snyder took the basis of Mike Carey's works and applied them into his cosmology, Vertigo doesn't fit in very well.
Click to expand...
Lucifer was shown to be The Great Darkness during the latest Crisis event.

@Deagonx @PrinceofPein @Eficiente @Firestorm808 @LuciferDC099 @Qawsedf234

What do you think about this?
 
Given that Williamson's origin story for the void/darkness is a direct callback to the Swamp Thing story involving the Presence, it's hard not to see why we wouldn't include them, especially given that the Lucifer and Great Darkness were equated, and Dan Watters established Lucifer as being the Presence's dark opposite used to give him definition. Dan Watters also contributed to the ongoing Dark Crisis and is helping with Williamsons cosmology. If anything we could just have a different key for this version of Lucifer if we really needed to distinguish them, but there's nothing inherently wrong with a character inhabiting or scaling to multiple cosmologies, we just need to prove thats the case, unlike say Pralaya who has no connection to anything else in DC.
 
Okay then. I strongly dislike the morbid and dystopian changes that Williamson and Watters have imposed on the cosmology, but suppose that I have to accept blending them then.

So how would this affect our current tiering, and should a specific discussion thread be created to discuss this issue?
 
I'm not sure it affects the tiering much, but I haven't read the rest of the comic. Williamson is more explicit about certain things, but we already treat the Presence, Overvoid, Lucifer, and the Great Darkness as all having the same tier.
 
Antvasima said:
Lucifer was shown to be The Great Darkness during the latest Crisis event.

@Deagonx @PrinceofPein @Eficiente @Firestorm808 @LuciferDC099 @Qawsedf234

What do you think about this?
Click to expand...
No, the Great Darkness only took the form of Lucifer, Trigon, The Upside-Down Man during its interaction with John Constantine during the last Crisis event. In any case, it doesn't matter since some information contradicting what we had a year earlier has been falsified. I am not saying that there is no contradiction but Williamson's cosmology is in direct continuity with the work of Scott Snyder, notably with Infinite Frontier, and he took the basis of the works of Morrison (Final Crisis/Multiversity) and Marv Wolfman (Crisis on Infinite Earths) and Allen Moore (Swamp Thing: American Gothic).
 
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As for the new multiversal configuration featured at the end of Death Metal and Infinite Frontier, the little Omniverse created by the Hands, no one, except the Great Darkness, really scale to it.
 
First off, hello all, I'm new here.

Secondly, if Ultima's Proposal passes, Dematteis cosmology should be affected positively by it. As per the accepted cosmology blog, The Presence sees all of creation as a dream. I'm not sure what tier it will be granted or if it'll affect other characters/cosmology, but it should get a decent bump. That's if the proposal passes, of course.

By the way, after looking over the cosmology blog, Dematteis specifically. Why doesn't The Presence and Pralaya have Transduality or Nonduality on their pages? It is pretty explicit that The Presence birthed duality from his oneness and transcends it as its formed within his dream. Pralaya, Mahapralaya specifically, predates it and will erase it, when its time. The scans are already in the cosmology page so I'm wondering why they haven't been added.

That is all, for now.
 
Asterotheology said:
By the way, after looking over the cosmology blog, Dematteis specifically. Why doesn't The Presence and Pralaya have Transduality or Nonduality on their pages? It is pretty explicit that The Presence birthed duality from his oneness and transcends it as its formed within his dream. Pralaya, Mahapralaya specifically, predates it and will erase it, when its time. The scans are already in the cosmology page so I'm wondering why they haven't been added.
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Presumably because we haven't gotten around to updating the profiles.
 
Deagonx said:
This very likely wouldn't qualify for the type of transcendence being discussed, as it's shown that one can ascend/descend through the layers of reality with relative ease.
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I don't think that necessarily disqualifies The Presence. Everything in creation is a part of it's dream. Them being able to move up through all of creation doesn't really lessens that it's a dream/illusion in comparison to The Presence, who's beyond it all.

As seen in issues 6, 17 and 20 of Doctor Fate(1988), they're referred to as drops in the divine ocean of love. Said drops only being "drops" of God's consciousness(issue 20, page 11). That's along with The Presence containing and surpassing everyone and everything in creation with them only being viewed as "small aspects" and a "minor drifting thought" in the sea of eternity. It's made pretty clear that creation and all other beings aren't real compared to The Presence.

So all in all, I do believe it would apply. The Presence and Creation are accepted as being separated by the dream/illusion, which the latter is. Them passing up through said illusion easily doesn't really negate that only the Presence truly exist beyond it all. If you still disagree then that's fine. I already pointed to where each thing is stated or shown in those comics. Some of the above statements and scans are already accepted in the cosmology blog, like all of creation being just a dream and The Presence surpasses it all completely as the Void Beyond All Voids.

That's my thoughts on it. We can revisit it at a later date, if Ultima's proposal passes. It only applies to The Presence in Dematteis cosmology. Since only it truly exist while everything else is an illusion.
 
Asterotheology said:
Them being able to move up through all of creation doesn't really lessens that it's a dream/illusion in comparison to The Presence, who's beyond it all.
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The fact that each layer is "deeper" dream is a defeater to this unless something specific says that the layer to the presence is qualitatively different.
 
Deagonx said:
The fact that each layer is "deeper" dream is a defeater to this unless something specific says that the layer to the presence is qualitatively different.
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The layer to the Presence would be the void itself or Mahapralaya. Something that is put squarely between the Presence and Creation. It drags all of creation down into the sea of brahma after the Kali Yuga cycle. A sleep that all things and beings must fall into when it's time for the sleep of brahma. This is before the Presence starts the whole process of creation over again by birthing duality from it's oneness and so on. All of this is seen in Doctor Fate(1988) issue 6 and Justice League Dark Issues 39-41.

What can I really say beyond that? It's accepted on the cosmology page that the Presence is infinitely greater than Pralaya, seeing it as a dream. Then Pralaya is infinitely greater than all of creation, along with Heaven and it's planes of existence. If the blog is wrong then maybe someone should edit it to reflect what's actually accepted. If that's still not enough for you or others then I'm fine with conceding the point. I don't really see a need to argue on about it.
 
I think DeMatteis and Vertigo Cosmologies would be upgraded back to 1-A, but Morrison and Snyder's Cosmology would, and should, say to 1-C.
 
Elizio33 said:
I think DeMatteis and Vertigo Cosmologies would be upgraded back to 1-A, but Morrison and Snyder's Cosmology would, and should, say to 1-C.
Click to expand...
I largely agree with Asterotheology here, but what is your reasoning for Vertigo being upgraded?
 
Elizio33 said:
I have started a sandbox regarding the "Crisis Cosmology" of Morrison, Snyder, Tynion, Williamson.

vsbattles.fandom.com

Elizio33/Sandbox9

vsbattles.fandom.com vsbattles.fandom.com
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Thank you greatly for helping out. 🙏

@Eficiente @Qawsedf234 @SuperAPM @Firestorm808 @EmperorRorepmeTwo @LuciferDC099 @Ehnkr2beboh @Deagonx @MarvelFanatic119 @catzlaflame @LephyrTheRevanchist @Lightning_XXI @Stefano4444 @LuciferX @Vasco @Excel616 @Immortalgodd @JohnCenaNation @VeryGoofyToddler @ByAsura @Emirp sumitpo @Quantu @IdiosyncraticLawyer @PrinceofPein @Maverick_Zero_X @catzlaflame @Robo432343 @VeryGoofyToddler @Lonkitt @LordTracer @Alonik @ProfectusInfinity @IdiosyncraticLawyer @M3X_ 2.0 @Zensum @Spinosaurus75DinosaurFan @Hykuu @KingEzran @Dark-Carioca @DarkDragonMedeus

Are you willing to help provide input please?
 
Robo432343 said:
he just said he thinks vertigo cosmologies would be upgraded back to 1-A
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Gasper said:
But why thought
Click to expand...
Because Ultima is proposing that we ditch the idea that transcending dimensionality is somehow equivalent to one layer. At least people won't bash us so hard for "downplaying" DC to 1-C anymore.
 
If Ultima somehow puts being conceptual above dimensionality as a sort of recollection of being 1-A then yes.

Either way, Vertigo is very flowery and vague. Matteis can easily go for 1-A. I don't see how Snyder or Morrison would make any sense unless we combined them and used Animal Man with the Interconnection and White Light.

Williamson would have to scale from Snyder since he helped Tynion and Snyder write some of the stories and is the next even following Metal with Infinite Frontier that tied to Dark Frontier which we refer to as Dark Crisis.
 
Yeah I think people are putting the cart before the horse here. There's no guarantee the thread passes or that if it does pass that the final conclusion will be the same as how Ultima first presented it.
 
I agree with Ultima in that sense being beyond “dimensionality” is being “above” it. Being one layer means that we go to a mathematical route where there are stages to infinity and branches of different sets. This doesn't make sense if you fully transcend the dimension. Given the context of how comics work. Should apply specifically to their ideal, not a mashup of all fiction like Lovecraft or Unsong.

Given Lucifer's will defines “infinity” as local and since he and long side his brother made a Creation that is all-encompassing then his will primates any level in Creation.

The Void itself transcends any level of anything and everything.
 
I'll will say something about Vertigo Void and Overvoid. Vertigo versions extend any level of stacking by making all things stack in repetition. It expands and surpasses any structure of the level. While for Morrison his Void simply is a fictional representation of canvas. It logically is more 0-D than the transcendent of dimensions.

While you can add anything to Void, you can not to Overvoid thus it is bigger than the Flaw but not transcendent of it. You can add any level to the Void and it will transcend it. The Overvoid would blend the concept with nothing and become a sublime Oneness without transcending, becomes it.
 
 
Crisis Cosmology

The DC Cosmology was primarily helmed by four authors in the late 2000s and 2022s. Grant Morrison, Scott Snyder, and James Tynion IV and later Joshua Williamson made the most significant contributions to the cosmology during this era, with the development of concepts like the Overvoid, the Monitors, Perpetua, the Dark Multiverse, the Collective Unconscious, and other cosmological concepts that currently define DC as we know it. This cosmology draws heavily from the various pillars of the DC cosmology, such as the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Monitor and Anti-Monitor, the Endless, and the various myths and gods incorporated into the canon. Despite some differences across these authors, the greater picture is consistent enough to consider them a single cosmological continuity. Although there were major differences between Joshua Williamson's work from the mid-2022 and that of Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV a year earlier, some of these contradictions were falsified with the conclusion of Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths and Dark Crisis: The Deadly Green.

Number of Universes: The number of universes was infinite before the Crisis on Infinite Earths which reduced it to a singular universe until the Infinite Crisis which brought back the multiverse with a set number of fifty-two universes occupying the same space at different frequencies constituting the "local" multiverse. However, there could be more universes outside those known with the discovery of the 53rd universe.

It was in the aftermath of the rebirth of the multiverse at the end of Death Metal “Anti-Crisis” that a new configuration of the multiverse emerged with countless new universes and an infinite stream of multiverses. It is possible that these "new" universes are actually those that were not known to anyone in the past configuration of the multiverse.

Geometric and Temporal Dimensions: As for the geometric and temporal dimensions, the multiverse is described as having a 4-D space-time continuum. This was the case for Grant Morrison's approach on the DC Cosmology that was later adopted by Scott Snyder, as evidenced in his Justice League run. In Mr. Mxyzptlk's own words: "The multiverse, as you live it, puny heads, exists in four dimensions..." He explained to the Justice League that they experiences the first four dimensions which, in Snyder's words, are point, line, depth, and time.

Despite Scott Snyder's comments about the notion that the dimensions mentioned by Mr. Mxyzptlk in his Justice League run are non-physics based, it's worth noting that when Mr. Mxyzptlk described the dimensionality of the multiverse, he did so almost verbatim in a way that represented a 4-D space-time continuum. This has been described before in better and more accurate terms in Grant Morrison's Action Comics #15: "There is a place beyond length, beyond width, beyond depth and time." In this way, Snyder's comments about the non-physics based dimensions only applies to the fifth and sixth dimensions.

The Bleed: The four-dimensionsal space between universes. It was described as the substance of life where the House of Heroes rotates through the fifth-dimensional axis in a fixed point in the multiversal structure of the Orrery of Worlds. Four siphons have been drilled in from the Monitor Sphere to the Orrery, to permit harvest of the miracle Ultramenstruum, known also known as Bleed, from the universes of the multiverse, that the Monitors refer to as 'germ worlds.'

Orrery of Worlds: The construct encompassing the local multiverse, originally created during the first contact of Monitor-Mind the Overvoid with the new creation within it. It also contains the Rock of Eternity and House of Heroes which exist outside the universes. When Monitor-Mind The Overvoid found the new creation, it created a concept to contain creation, scabbing it over in divine metal. At the bottom of the Orrery of Worlds is the World Forge inhabited by Alpheus the World Forger and his Dragon, Barbatos.

Speed Force Wall: An energy field otherwise known to the inhabitants of the Orrery as the Speed of Light. It is described as the limit to matter on the main map of the multiverse by Grant Morrison. Thus, beyond this superluminal barrier, matter is converted into pure information. This is important because outside this barrier starts a pattern of increasing levels of existence corresponding to less and less "realness" with archetypal realms inhabited by living ideas and thoughts.

Wonderworld: An enormous primal world orbiting the perimeter of the Orrery of Worlds at incredible velocities. Despite having no appearance in Morrison's works of the 2000s and those of Scott Snyder, it was deemed important enough by Morrison to devote an entire entry to the left side of the map of the multiverse.

Sphere of the Gods: An archetypal realm on the edge of the multiverse, outside the corporeal reality, whose inhabitants live on a higher plane of existence than the inhabitants of the Orrery of Worlds. It is the homeworld of all gods and deities worshiped by mortals. It was described as a spherical realm of pure magic surrounding the multiverse.

All realms of the Sphere of the Gods are called fictions, which author James Tynion IV explained as a reference to their connection to the Collective Unconscious, which manifests divinity through belief. The Sphere of the Gods is the source of magic, the fundamental power of creation and belief, and destroying said energy would result in the destruction of the material reality as a consequence.

Collective Unconscious: The collective ideal form of mortal souls above the Sphere of the Gods from which all gods and divine realms have arisen through the collective beliefs and imagination of humanity. In this way, all realms of the Sphere of the Gods are "fictions". It houses Hecate's personal realm, the Witch's Moon, a metaphor for the first mystery gazed upon by man.

Comic Book Limbo: The last outpost of existence, Limbo exists "nowhere" without time in the normal sense, it is the home of forgotten characters that are dumped from continuity. There are no stories in Limbo, except in the Book of Infinite Pages, which contains all the stories of Creation. It goes one step further into nothingness, as such, if someone stays in Limbo for too long, they lose memories and disappear from everyone's memory. It's completely outside and disconnected from the Orrery of Worlds, floating between it and the Thought Robot.

The statement "Music is over: We've run out of the Multiverse" doesn't mean that Limbo is outside of the whole creation, it only refers to Orrery of Worlds, because they used the Ultima Thule for traveling between universes which is a trans-dimensional yacht powered by sound vibrations, by altering its pitch and wavelength it is possible to travel to other universes (because each universe has a different frequency), i.e. music being over means that Limbo is outside of all parallel universes and the Orrery. There's no time in Limbo. "Time" in this context doesn't refer to the concept of time since the Monitor Sphere, above Limbo, has a time.

Monitor Sphere: An archetypal world and home to Nil, the world of the Monitors standing at the edge of the "art" and of the mind of God. As the mystery of the Orrery and Thought Robot caused Monitor-Mind to invent narratives to go along with it, the Monitor Sphere and Nil took shape outside the Sphere of the Gods. Remember from the previous section how going from the multiverse to Comic Book Limbo required crossing the Void. This is reflected in statements that Nil is part of the Void and that Monitor nanotechnology is coming from the Void to attack Limbo. Concepts like space, time and scale are more meaningful, profound, with "time" in the Monitor Sphere referring to the clockwork pattern in the sky. Time in Nil seems to function as a temporal dimension, because when it entered the Monitor Sphere, it form "beginnings" and "ends".

Fifth Dimension: Now we come to the Fifth Dimension which has a long history of retcon, but its depiction as imagination dates back to Grant Morrison's JLA: Crisis Times Five in 1999 and the 2008s Batman R.I.P story. Scott Snyder took this concept and applied it to the cosmology as the "blood" of the multiverse and flow of energy between the realms. Since it transcends time, the Fifth Dimension exists everywhere at once. It was also described as an Imaginary thought-construct. It is important to note that Mr. Mxyzptlk showed the entire multiverse map when he described the Fifth Dimension to the Justice League and said that it exists everywhere at once, which means that the Fifth Dimension encompasses everything on the multiverse map, except the Sixth Dimension and the Source Wall.

It is a very reasonable interpretation that the Fifth Dimension has a direct relationship to the Bleed. The House of Heroes, anchored at a fixed point in the Bleed, was said to rotate through the Fifth Dimension which, according to Mr. Mxyzptlk, exists all around the 4-dimensional spatiotemporal multiverse and was represented as imagination and the blood of the multiverse. Here are Mr. Mxyzptlk's own words when pointed out the entire map of the multiverse: "Now add imagination, which is outside of time, and... Poof! Ta-Da! it's everything at once, existing backward and forward simultaneously. Imagination is the blood of the multiverse, the energy that flows between the realms." In addition to the above points, the Monitors refer to Bleed as the substance of life itself, draining it out of creation and draining the life out of stories (this evidence can be found in the Monitor Sphere section further down). Given that Mxyz uses "unimagination" and reduces the story back to sketches, everything seems to line up. In this regard, the Fifth Dimension is the highest level of the Bleed.

Sixth Dimension: The final realm and the highest plane of existence of the multiverse, as Mr. Mxyzptlk calls it, a realm of the impossible where the multiverse was created and set in motion. As seen below, the Sixth Dimension and its inhabitants are depicted as far larger than the Multiverse. Mr. Mxyzptlk was only able to open a portal there because the Source Wall was destroyed, but the happenings of the Sixth Dimension are beyond even his perception.

In an Hero's Initiative interview with Scott Snyder, he describes the Sixth Dimension as a spherical layer that envelops the entire multiverse, being an emergency room where quintessential beings come to monitor all of creation and set the rules of things. He also said that the Source Wall is above the Sixth Dimension.

Dark Multiverse: A vast subconscious realm of dark matter upon which floats the Multiverse. It's the unintended side effect of the process of creating new worlds, coupled with the treachery of Barbatos. It consists of infinite worlds of nightmare, similar to the infinite timelines of the main Multiverse has. It is directly stated that Perpetua's original Creation had nothing to do with the formation of the Dark Multiverse. Some realms such as the Dreaming and the Phantom Zone have strong connections to the Dark Multiverse.

The Other Place: An empty Void of space inhabited by the Otherkind and the Upside-Down Man. Long since Hecate imprisonned the Upside-Down Man here since the dawn of the multiverse, he infected this place with his reality. It is the source of all dark magic that Hecate took a piece of and gave to humanity to "curse" them. Although in the 2018 relaunch of Justice League Dark, James Tynion IV presented the Great Darkness as the dark opposite to the Sphere of the Gods, connected to the Dark Multiverse, this notion was later retconned by Joshua Williamson who described the Great Darkness as the vast black infinitude preceding the Overvoid.

Promethean Galaxy and the Source Wall: While not a literal galaxy, the Promethean Galaxy is a realm as old as creation and farthest finite frontier of reality where the Source Wall is located. The Source Wall is the limit to thought and the protective shell around the multiverse, closing it off from the Greater Omniverse. In all directions from any universe within the multiverse, the wall is the final point, separating all of creation from the Overvoid. In Countdown, which contradicted Final Crisis in many ways it was said that the Source Wall separates universes. However, this does not fit with the rest of Morrison's works.

Nil did not have the Source Wall around it during Final Crisis, this is because the Source Wall was destroyed in Death of the New Gods, which was a lead-in comic to Final Crisis. Grant Morrison affirmed that elements of Final Crisis were intentionally written to match the events of DotNG in this interview.

New multiversal congiguration: Following Scott Snyder's Dark Nights: Death Metal, a new configuration of the multiverse emerged, with each previous iteration being restored and incorporated into a web of infinite multiverses constituting a "small" Omniverse within the Greater Omniverse, aligning with Morrison's early conceptualization of a multi-multiverse. One of these iterations is the "Multiverse-2" which was revealed to be the Pre-Crisis Multiverse. There is no Source Wall in this new iteration of the multiverse, as The Hands had removed all boundaries within it, deeming them unnecessary, when recreating the main multiverse.

Another change in this new iteration of the multiverse is that two new Earths have emerged: Earth Omega and Elseworld, replacing the Earth-0 position as the center of the multiverse, each being opposite one another. Earth Omega is an obscure reality and a piece of the Great Darkness. Barry Allen had to traverse all 52 universes of the known multiverse gathering enough multiversal energy to enter Earth Omega and discovered that there were no vibrational frequencies in Earth Omega.

Finally, this new configuration of the multiverse is divided into two different aspects, "space" and "time" constituting the Divine Continuum which has been described as an abstract representation of existence. Space, otherwise known as the Omniverse, is split into the Multiverse, which itself splits into the Metaverse aka Prime Earth, the Dark Multiverse and the Sphere of the Gods. The space aspect has always been changing, being shaping around Prime Earth referred to the Metalverse. It was stated that the Omniverse is more conceptual at its core. Time, otherwise known as Hypertime, is split into Limbo and the Vanishing Point. It was stated that Hypertime is more emotional at its core as it perpetually changes due to a natural reaction to the events as well as to direct manipulations of the Timestream.

Greater Omniverse/Overvoid: The impossible and all-consuming void of immaculate perfection where thoughts cease to be and an infinity of multiverse are created by super-celestial beings like Perpetua constituting a Greater Omniverse. Chronicler, a functionary of The Source, had recorded trillions of dying multiverses there. It should be noted that while Morrison treats the Overvoid as the non-dual and infinite canvas, this notion was later retconned in Scott Snyder's stories and the Overvoid now appears to have an end according to Perpetua and beings from the Greater Omniverse and some gods can travel through the Overvoid.

Unseen Council: This name has been used by Scott Snyder to describes a hierarchy, which eventually reaches the Source, like the Hands, Perpetua and the Cosmic Raptor who inhabit the Overvoid. According to Perpetua, the void has an end. This is where her siblings, the other supercelestials, reside. It was also said that the original multiverse was flying through the void to an unknown destination, awaiting the final judgement. This is echoed by Alpheus who stated that when a Multiverse breaks apart before its final evolution, it's sent back to the banks of creation which it was created by super celestial beings like Perpetua.

The Source/The Overvoid/ The Presence = Light: Although generally associated with different parts of DC cosmology, these three entities actually make up a single entity, the Light, as Joshua Williamson calls it. Each of the three points of view all existing as superior to the Greater Omniverse and the Unseen Council, as an impossible white void of immaculate perfection beyond all creations.

A few years earlier, Morrison had directly stated that the Overvoid and The Source were the same, just as Snyder did with The Presence and The Source. In the 2022s, Joshua Williamson presented the Light as the first "something" to come and grow from the Great Darkness and depicted the Light as the Overvoid featured in Morrison's works, and as the Giant Hand that concluded a truce with the Great Darkness in Allen Moore's Swamp Thing: American Gothic.

Great Darkness: In the 2022 limited series Justice League Incarnate and Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, Joshua Williamson brought the Great Darkness, introduced in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing: American Gothic, into the DC Cosmology in the Rebirth era. Williamson specifically references the original Great Darkness storyline from Swamp Thing, when Zatara died, and creation was nearly destroyed. Williamson fashioned the Great Darkness similarly to its original depiction in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, as the single all-encompassing black infinitude in which the Light was born and grew with creation within it.

Edit: I forgot the last sections.
 
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Elizio33 said:
Crisis Cosmology

The DC Cosmology was primarily helmed by four authors in the late 2000s and 2022s. Grant Morrison, Scott Snyder, and James Tynion IV and later Joshua Williamson made the most significant contributions to the cosmology during this era, with the development of concepts like the Overvoid, the Monitors, Perpetua, the Dark Multiverse, the Collective Unconscious, and other cosmological concepts that currently define DC as we know it. This cosmology draws heavily from the various pillars of the DC cosmology, such as the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Monitor and Anti-Monitor, the Endless, and the various myths and gods incorporated into the canon. Despite some differences across these authors, the greater picture is consistent enough to consider them a single cosmological continuity. Although there were major differences between Joshua Williamson's work from the mid-2022 and that of Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV a year earlier, some of these contradictions were falsified with the conclusion of Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths and Dark Crisis: The Deadly Green.

Number of Universes: The number of universes was infinite before the Crisis on Infinite Earths which reduced it to a singular universe until the Infinite Crisis which brought back the multiverse with a set number of fifty-two universes occupying the same space at different frequencies constituting the "local" multiverse. However, there could be more universes outside those known with the discovery of the 53rd universe.

It was in the aftermath of the rebirth of the multiverse at the end of Death Metal “Anti-Crisis” that a new configuration of the multiverse emerged with countless new universes and an infinite stream of multiverses. It is possible that these "new" universes are actually those that were not known to anyone in the past configuration of the multiverse.

Geometric and Temporal Dimensions: As for the geometric and temporal dimensions, the multiverse is described as having a 4-D space-time continuum. This was the case for Grant Morrison's approach on the DC Cosmology that was later adopted by Scott Snyder, as evidenced in his Justice League run. In Mr. Mxyzptlk's own words: "The multiverse, as you live it, puny heads, exists in four dimensions..." He explained to the Justice League that they experiences the first four dimensions which, in Snyder's words, are point, line, depth, and time.

Despite Scott Snyder's comments about the notion that the dimensions mentioned by Mr. Mxyzptlk in his Justice League run are non-physics based, it's worth noting that when Mr. Mxyzptlk described the dimensionality of the multiverse, he did so almost verbatim in a way that represented a 4-D space-time continuum. This has been described before in better and more accurate terms in Grant Morrison's Action Comics #15: "There is a place beyond length, beyond width, beyond depth and time." In this way, Snyder's comments about the non-physics based dimensions only applies to the fifth and sixth dimensions.

The Bleed: The four-dimensionsal space between universes. It was described as the substance of life where the House of Heroes rotates through the fifth-dimensional axis in a fixed point in the multiversal structure of the Orrery of Worlds. Four siphons have been drilled in from the Monitor Sphere to the Orrery, to permit harvest of the miracle Ultramenstruum, known also known as Bleed, from the universes of the multiverse, that the Monitors refer to as 'germ worlds.'

Orrery of Worlds: The construct encompassing the local multiverse, originally created during the first contact of Monitor-Mind the Overvoid with the new creation within it. It also contains the Rock of Eternity and House of Heroes which exist outside the universes. When Monitor-Mind The Overvoid found the new creation, it created a concept to contain creation, scabbing it over in divine metal. At the bottom of the Orrery of Worlds is the World Forge inhabited by Alpheus the World Forger and his Dragon, Barbatos.

Speed Force Wall: An energy field otherwise known to the inhabitants of the Orrery as the Speed of Light. It is described as the limit to matter on the main map of the multiverse by Grant Morrison. Thus, beyond this superluminal barrier, matter is converted into pure information. This is important because outside this barrier starts a pattern of increasing levels of existence corresponding to less and less "realness" with archetypal realms inhabited by living ideas and thoughts.

Wonderworld: An enormous primal world orbiting the perimeter of the Orrery of Worlds at incredible velocities. Despite having no appearance in Morrison's works of the 2000s and those of Scott Snyder, it was deemed important enough by Morrison to devote an entire entry to the left side of the map of the multiverse.

Sphere of the Gods: An archetypal realm on the edge of the multiverse, outside the corporeal reality, whose inhabitants live on a higher plane of existence than the inhabitants of the Orrery of Worlds. It is the homeworld of all gods and deities worshiped by mortals. It was described as a spherical realm of pure magic surrounding the multiverse.

All realms of the Sphere of the Gods are called fictions, which author James Tynion IV explained as a reference to their connection to the Collective Unconscious, which manifests divinity through belief. The Sphere of the Gods is the source of magic, the fundamental power of creation and belief, and destroying said energy would result in the destruction of the material reality as a consequence.

Collective Unconscious: The collective ideal form of mortal souls above the Sphere of the Gods from which all gods and divine realms have arisen through the collective beliefs and imagination of humanity. In this way, all realms of the Sphere of the Gods are "fictions". It houses Hecate's personal realm, the Witch's Moon, a metaphor for the first mystery gazed upon by man.

Comic Book Limbo: The last outpost of existence, Limbo exists "nowhere" without time in the normal sense, it is the home of forgotten characters that are dumped from continuity. There are no stories in Limbo, except in the Book of Infinite Pages, which contains all the stories of Creation. It goes one step further into nothingness, as such, if someone stays in Limbo for too long, they lose memories and disappear from everyone's memory. It's completely outside and disconnected from the Orrery of Worlds, floating between it and the Thought Robot.

The statement "Music is over: We've run out of the Multiverse" doesn't mean that Limbo is outside of the whole creation, it only refers to Orrery of Worlds, because they used the Ultima Thule for traveling between universes which is a trans-dimensional yacht powered by sound vibrations, by altering its pitch and wavelength it is possible to travel to other universes (because each universe has a different frequency), i.e. music being over means that Limbo is outside of all parallel universes and the Orrery. There's no time in Limbo. "Time" in this context doesn't refer to the concept of time since the Monitor Sphere, above Limbo, has a time.

Monitor Sphere: An archetypal world and home to Nil, the world of the Monitors standing at the edge of the "art" and of the mind of God. As the mystery of the Orrery and Thought Robot caused Monitor-Mind to invent narratives to go along with it, the Monitor Sphere and Nil took shape outside the Sphere of the Gods. Remember from the previous section how going from the multiverse to Comic Book Limbo required crossing the Void. This is reflected in statements that Nil is part of the Void and that Monitor nanotechnology is coming from the Void to attack Limbo. Concepts like space, time and scale are more meaningful, profound, with "time" in the Monitor Sphere referring to the clockwork pattern in the sky. Time in Nil seems to function as a temporal dimension, because when it entered the Monitor Sphere, it form "beginnings" and "ends".

Fifth Dimension: Now we come to the Fifth Dimension which has a long history of retcon, but its depiction as imagination dates back to Grant Morrison's JLA: Crisis Times Five in 1999 and the 2008s Batman R.I.P story. Scott Snyder took this concept and applied it to the cosmology as the "blood" of the multiverse and flow of energy between the realms. Since it transcends time, the Fifth Dimension exists everywhere at once. It was also described as an Imaginary thought-construct. It is important to note that Mr. Mxyzptlk showed the entire multiverse map when he described the Fifth Dimension to the Justice League and said that it exists everywhere at once, which means that the Fifth Dimension encompasses everything on the multiverse map, except the Sixth Dimension and the Source Wall.

It is a very reasonable interpretation that the Fifth Dimension has a direct relationship to the Bleed. The House of Heroes, anchored at a fixed point in the Bleed, was said to rotate through the Fifth Dimension which, according to Mr. Mxyzptlk, exists all around the 4-dimensional spatiotemporal multiverse and was represented as imagination and the blood of the multiverse. Here are Mr. Mxyzptlk's own words when pointed out the entire map of the multiverse: "Now add imagination, which is outside of time, and... Poof! Ta-Da! it's everything at once, existing backward and forward simultaneously. Imagination is the blood of the multiverse, the energy that flows between the realms." In addition to the above points, the Monitors refer to Bleed as the substance of life itself, draining it out of creation and draining the life out of stories (this evidence can be found in the Monitor Sphere section further down). Given that Mxyz uses "unimagination" and reduces the story back to sketches, everything seems to line up. In this regard, the Fifth Dimension is the highest level of the Bleed.

Sixth Dimension: The final realm and the highest plane of existence of the multiverse, as Mr. Mxyzptlk calls it, a realm of the impossible where the multiverse was created and set in motion. As seen below, the Sixth Dimension and its inhabitants are depicted as far larger than the Multiverse. Mr. Mxyzptlk was only able to open a portal there because the Source Wall was destroyed, but the happenings of the Sixth Dimension are beyond even his perception.

In an Hero's Initiative interview with Scott Snyder, he describes the Sixth Dimension as a spherical layer that envelops the entire multiverse, being an emergency room where quintessential beings come to monitor all of creation and set the rules of things. He also said that the Source Wall is above the Sixth Dimension.

Dark Multiverse: A vast subconscious realm of dark matter upon which floats the Multiverse. It's the unintended side effect of the process of creating new worlds, coupled with the treachery of Barbatos. It consists of infinite worlds of nightmare, similar to the infinite timelines of the main Multiverse has. It is directly stated that Perpetua's original Creation had nothing to do with the formation of the Dark Multiverse. Some realms such as the Dreaming and the Phantom Zone have strong connections to the Dark Multiverse.

The Other Place: An empty Void of space inhabited by the Otherkind and the Upside-Down Man. Long since Hecate imprisonned the Upside-Down Man here since the dawn of the multiverse, he infected this place with his reality. It is the source of all dark magic that Hecate took a piece of and gave to humanity to "curse" them. Although in the 2018 relaunch of Justice League Dark, James Tynion IV presented the Great Darkness as the dark opposite to the Sphere of the Gods, connected to the Dark Multiverse, this notion was later retconned by Joshua Williamson who described the Great Darkness as the vast black infinitude preceding the Overvoid.

Promethean Galaxy and the Source Wall: While not a literal galaxy, the Promethean Galaxy is a realm as old as creation and farthest finite frontier of reality where the Source Wall is located. The Source Wall is the limit to thought and the protective shell around the multiverse, closing it off from the Greater Omniverse. In all directions from any universe within the multiverse, the wall is the final point, separating all of creation from the Overvoid. In Countdown, which contradicted Final Crisis in many ways it was said that the Source Wall separates universes. However, this does not fit with the rest of Morrison's works.

Nil did not have the Source Wall around it during Final Crisis, this is because the Source Wall was destroyed in Death of the New Gods, which was a lead-in comic to Final Crisis. Grant Morrison affirmed that elements of Final Crisis were intentionally written to match the events of DotNG in this interview.

New multiversal congiguration: Following Scott Snyder's Dark Nights: Death Metal, a new configuration of the multiverse emerged, with each previous iteration being restored and incorporated into a web of infinite multiverses constituting a "small" Omniverse within the Greater Omniverse, aligning with Morrison's early conceptualization of a multi-multiverse. One of these iterations is the "Multiverse-2" which was revealed to be the Pre-Crisis Multiverse. There is no Source Wall in this new iteration of the multiverse, as The Hands had removed all boundaries within it, deeming them unnecessary, when recreating the main multiverse.

Another change in this new iteration of the multiverse is that two new Earths have emerged: Earth Omega and Elseworld, replacing the Earth-0 position as the center of the multiverse, each being opposite one another. Earth Omega is an obscure reality and a piece of the Great Darkness. Barry Allen had to traverse all 52 universes of the known multiverse gathering enough multiversal energy to enter Earth Omega and discovered that there were no vibrational frequencies in Earth Omega.

Finally, this new configuration of the multiverse is divided into two different aspects, "space" and "time" constituting the Divine Continuum which has been described as an abstract representation of existence. Space, otherwise known as the Omniverse, is split into the Multiverse, which itself splits into the Metaverse aka Prime Earth, the Dark Multiverse and the Sphere of the Gods. The space aspect has always been changing, being shaping around Prime Earth referred to the Metalverse. It was stated that the Omniverse is more conceptual at its core. Time, otherwise known as Hypertime, is split into Limbo and the Vanishing Point. It was stated that Hypertime is more emotional at its core as it perpetually changes due to a natural reaction to the events as well as to direct manipulations of the Timestream.

Greater Omniverse/Overvoid: The impossible and all-consuming void of immaculate perfection where thoughts cease to be and an infinity of multiverse are created by super-celestial beings like Perpetua constituting a Greater Omniverse. Chronicler, a functionary of The Source, had recorded trillions of dying multiverses there. It should be noted that while Morrison treats the Overvoid as the non-dual and infinite canvas, this notion was later retconned in Scott Snyder's stories and the Overvoid now appears to have an end according to Perpetua and beings from the Greater Omniverse and some gods can travel through the Overvoid.

Unseen Council: This name has been used by Scott Snyder to describes a hierarchy, which eventually reaches the Source, like the Hands, Perpetua and the Cosmic Raptor who inhabit the Overvoid. According to Perpetua, the void has an end. This is where her siblings, the other supercelestials, reside. It was also said that the original multiverse was flying through the void to an unknown destination, awaiting the final judgement. This is echoed by Alpheus who stated that when a Multiverse breaks apart before its final evolution, it's sent back to the banks of creation which it was created by super celestial beings like Perpetua.
Click to expand...
Looks good to me.
 
I forgot the last sections of Crisis Cosmology.

The Source/The Overvoid/ The Presence = Light: Although generally associated with different parts of DC cosmology, these three entities actually make up a single entity, the Light, as Joshua Williamson calls it. Each of the three points of view all existing as superior to the Greater Omniverse and the Unseen Council, as an impossible white void of immaculate perfection beyond all creations.

A few years earlier, Morrison had directly stated that the Overvoid and The Source were the same, just as Snyder did with The Presence and The Source. In the 2022s, Joshua Williamson presented the Light as the first "something" to come and grow from the Great Darkness and depicted the Light as the Overvoid featured in Morrison's works, and as the Giant Hand that concluded a truce with the Great Darkness in Allen Moore's Swamp Thing: American Gothic.

Great Darkness: In the 2022 limited series Justice League Incarnate and Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, Joshua Williamson brought the Great Darkness, introduced in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing: American Gothic, into the DC Cosmology in the Rebirth era. Williamson specifically references the original Great Darkness storyline from Swamp Thing, when Zatara died, and creation was nearly destroyed. Williamson fashioned the Great Darkness similarly to its original depiction in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, as the single all-encompassing black infinitude in which the Light was born and grew with creation within it.
 
Now what I could add from Morrison's older stories:

The 5-D imps viewing the 3-D world as fiction seen in JLA: Crisis Times Five.

The Fifth Dimension encompassing Time and Hypertime seen in JLA: Crisis Times Five.

The Fifth Dimension being outside of creation seen in JLA: Crisis Times Five.

The 5-D imps latching onto actual times in his assault seen in Action Comics.

The informations of the New Gods and Heaven/Hell.

The information for the Elemental Realms.

The information of the 4-D spatiotemporal multiverse.

The information of Wonderworld.
 
Elizio33 said:
The 5-D imps viewing the 3-D world as fiction seen in JLA: Crisis Times Five.
Click to expand...
I have to definitely disagree with this being added, as most of the Perpetua storyline seems very concrete that Perpetua doesn't see the Orrery or its inhabitants as fictional.
 
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