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The Monitors

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Yes, but they do not always exactly follow each other. For example, in Vertigo I had the impression that the Silver City preceded and was above and beyond the multiverse, not a lower part of it.
 
Also, in DC Comics, the Presence has been treated very differently from Vertigo.
 
Well, he did show up in the recent Phantom Stranger series, and in old Spectre comics.
 
And J.M. DeMatteis tends to treat him as more abstract than the Lucifer series.
 
That wasn't the full Presence, though. Phantom Stranger / Spectre stories tend to be very clear that they interact with what is known as The Voice / The Logos, which is an aspect of God.

And well, God is generally abstract in Sandman / Lucifer. It's just that the main characters in those are abstract too, just personified.

But I have to agree that DeMatteis tends to be more abstract and crazy in his writing.
 
If anything, I think that the new "Sandman Universe" comics will make things a lot more coherent.

You heard of it?
 
Yes, although Lucifer will now apparently be a powerless bum. I am not sure if that departure from the previous plot is a good way to resolve the questions raised about the Presence.
 
I think he won't start that way. He looks normal in some of the covers / previews. I think he'll be like that as a consequence of the previous story.
 
Perhaps. Or perhaps they just don't care about continuity, and ignore the previous series. I do not know yet.
 
By the way, Bendis says that he will respect previous Superman stories, and not simply start to tear everything down, like he did with Avengers, so that is good news for DC overall. I have liked much of the Rebirth stuff. Grant Morrison is allegedly also going to do Green Lantern comics.
 
Well, I did not like the Greg Pak revision of New Gods continuity, to make Darkseid and Highfather into brothers, among other things. I want the classic Kirby background stories.
 
Higher dimension means High 1-B at best though.
 
There's a statement implying it's four-dimensional, as well. It's kind of unreliable. And Mandrakk isn't confined to the Monitor Sphere, he spent most of the comic in the Overvoid.
 
...Which could easily just refer to a higher plane of existence.

It already transcends the infinite D multiverse and Limbo anyways so it would make sense. To reiterate what Sandman said,

" The world of the Monitor directly touches the Overvoid, meaning it either transcends the infinite D or that it is at the top of the infinite layer of dimension (which would imply it isnt infinite in the first place) or that is only one of the dimensions in the infinite dimensions of DC (which also doesnt make sense as that would imply the Overvoid also just one of the dimensions of DC as the world of the monitors directly touch it)

If the DCU is infinite D, then the Monitor Sphere transcends it. Grant Morrison said that Limbo is the edge of art and that the Monitor Sphere and the Overvoid are archetypal realms beyond the DCU proper "
 
The 4-D statement was the Thought Robot having 4-D vision in the Monitor sphere
 
Destiny was shown at the top layer of the multiversity map.
 
The Monitor world was created by the Monitor-Mind, both are said by Grant Morrison to be archetypal realms that exists beyond the DCU

The Thought Robot actually exists before the Monitor-Sphere and the Monitors. The Monitor-Mind extended a probe (Implied to have been the original CoIE Monitor or Dax Novu) to investigate the flaw, the concept of story confused the Monitor-Mind which has previously been a void, the probe split into two, one part scabbed over the flaw and the other became a symbol for the first story it encountered (the Thought Robot).

Though Robot is what remains of the first contact, the "mystery of the silent sentinel" infects the Monitor-Mind with questions and speculations which sparked the story of the race of the Monitors. So the the Monitor-Sphere is like an island floating in the sea which is the Overvoid (Which is why the Monitor world directly touches the Overvoid), the Monitor Sphere is made of narratives and the Monitors are ideas generated by the Monitor-Mind to protect itself against the flaw. At the end of the Final Crisis the Monitor-Sphere and the Monitors were swallowed/erased by the Overvoid because it has concluded its story, like LukasSolosYourVerse said above, Mandrakk was erased not simply because he touched the Overvoid, the Monitor-mind made a conscious decision to erase Mandrakk, if the Monitors simply gets erased by touching the Overvoid then Nix Uotan would have been dead long ago as he was in the Monitor world when it was swallowed by the Overvoid

GM: No. Monitor-Mind has worked through its own Ultimate Story and spared Nix Uotan to be its sole representative and interface with the Multiverse. I see Uotan's 'hyperhero' role in the DCU as a cross between the Silver Surfer and Doctor Who (particularly the Earthbound Jon Pertwee iteration of the character).

 
What do you think Matthew?
 
Also about the Monitors are primal forms, Grant Morrison confirmed that the Monitors are Platonic Universals and if you've read his book Pop Magic where he talks about primal forms, he believes that gods represent Platonic Ideals or archetypal human exiperiences. The Monitor-Sphere and the Overvoid was said to be an archetypal space beyond the DCU, "time" in the Monitor-Sphere was also not treated as a temporal dimension but as symbols and patterns that fills the sky of the Monitor world (Which also looks like the true Platonic Form/Essence of Darkseid) which coincides with it being an archetypal realm
 
1-A Monitors/Thought Robot.

Listen, TR is ******* bullshit enough as it is, the last thing we need is for him to be even more bullshit.
 
Grant Morrison said that Limbo is the last outpost of DCU proper, beyond it are the archetypal Monitor World and Overvoid

Morriso: Limbo is what's been erased, isn't it? It's literally the characters that are almost forgotten. Almost whited-out. It's the characters that have been dumped from the continuity for one reason or another. When I visited the idea in Animal Man back in the eighties, most of those characters were forgotten sixties characters. But now, the place is populated by these nineties Blood Pack and Hero Hotline guys! I've just always loved it as a concept. In the case of Superman Beyond, which was like a Yellow Submarine, Jason of the Argonauts tale, I wanted to take my super-Argonauts to that place at the very edge of art where all these forgotten ideas live. The last outpost of the DCU proper before the archetypal Monitor World and the Overvoid.

The Monitors are primal forms in a fundamental world. It's very likely that he's saying that the Monitors are Platonic Ideals/Forms

In GM's book Pop Magic, GM said that gods are primal forms that represents Platonic Ideals or archetypal human experience. I doubt that GM just randomly used the word primal form when he has used it before to refer to Platonic Ideals

assumption of godforms—where with "concentrated imagination of oneself in the symbolic shape of any God, one should be able to identify oneself with the idea which [the god] represents." Comics writer and practicing magician Grant Morrison describes the process in his essay Pop Magic. The Gods of myth are primal forms, expressions of big ideas that have been here long before us and will remain long after.Morrison writes that, for example;

ANGER is one of those Big Ideas and LOVE is another one. Then there's FEAR and GUILT

So…to summon a god, one has only to concentrate on that god to the exclusion of all other thought. Let's just say you wish to summon the Big Idea COMMUNICATION in the form of the god Hermes, so that he will grant you a silver-tongue. Hermes is the Greek personification of quick wit, art, and spelling and the qualities he represents were embodied by Classical artists in the symbol of an eternally swift and naked youth, fledged with tiny wings and dressed only in streamers of air. Hermes is a condensation into pictorial form ― a sigil, in fact ― of an easily recognizable default state of human consciousness. When our words and minds are nimble,when we conjure laughter from others, when we make poetry, we are in the real presence of Hermes. We are, in fact, possessed by the god.

Morrison is keen to point out that there need not be a ghostly or real reason for this. As Crowley wrote: In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.

People tend to become possessed by gods arbitrarily because they do not recognize them as such; a man can be overwhelmed with anger (the Greek god Ares), we can all be "beside ourselves" with passion (Aphrodite) or grief (Hades). in life we encounter these Big Ideas everyday but we no longer use the word "god" to describe them. The magician consciously evokes these states and renames them gods in order to separate them from his or her Self, in order to study them and learn.

So for example, "You may wish to connect with Hermes if you're beginning a novel or giving a speech or simply want to entertain a new beau with your incredible repartee". Practical magic then. Choose a god based on their qualities; what Platonic ideal or archetypal human experience they represent, and invoke them in order to know and learn from them. But again, a question arises. If these archetypal forms 'work' i.e. have effects, but they are not real, then why work with the old gods at all? Why not draw on modern myths.?

GM: Maybe Metron is a little more literal and specific an image, but he's kind of like an angel ― an angel of electricity and writing and inspiration like all of those messenger/writer gods I mentioned above. So I see him as the headman, the Platonic form, behind guys like the Flash and all the electric-based heroes in the DC Universe"
 
1

The Monitor-Mind extends a probe and was shocked by the concept of stories

2

The Monitor-Mind has no defenses against stories. The probe withdraws and split into two, one half turned into the Thought Robot, the "mystery of the silent sentinel" haunts the Monitor-mind and infected it with questions and narratives. Legend takes place and the contagion spreads.

Note that the Thought Robot here is standing the Overvoid as the Monitor-Sphere still doesnt exist

3

The "mystery of the silent sentinel" is, however, in itself a story, which sparks the story of the race of monitors (story begets story), who are effectively descendents of the Monitor-mind.

The story of the Monitors is the story of the Monitor-mind

GM: No. Monitor-Mind has worked through its own Ultimate Story and spared Nix Uotan to be its sole representative and interface with the Multiverse. I see Uotan's 'hyperhero' role in the DCU as a cross between the Silver Surfer and Doctor Who (particularly the Earthbound Jon Pertwee iteration of the character).
 
The thing about the Monitors is that they were platonic, archetypal, immutable entities, featureless and without limits... Which became limited and gained definition upon coming in contact with the concept of "Stories".

Even if the Monitors are 1-A, that would only scale to the original Monitors which we do not see.
 
The thing is Superman said "I'm walking among primal forms"

Also here is Dax Novu/Mandrakk before entering the Flaw and being "contaminated"

Flawn
 
The monitor sphere was still stated to be bound by dimensions, time and space.

The Monitor Sphere is only bounded by the Overvoid, which is why Thought Robot was able to push mandrakk into the Overvoid

Time In the Monitor Sphere is different from time and space in the multiverse,like how time isnt a temporal dimension but are symbols and patterns (like clockworks) that represents time. Which make sense as the monitor sphere is an archetypal realm
 
In the comic itself it was stated to be a higher dimension. And it was also stated that time and space has more meaning in there.
 
'A'nd it was also stated that time and space has more meaning in there.

Its an archetypal realm, everything there is more meaningful because everything in the Monitor Sphere is an archetype, the Thought Robot is a superman rchetype, the Monitors are primal forms, everything in the monitor sphere is more profound, meaningful and absolute because everything in it are "the original form/ideal form of everything"

That doesnt disprove 1-A at all , it actually supports it
 
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