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Who Dreamed First? The Presence or Mankind?

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Zensum said:
"In addition, Grant himself apparently considers The Presence, The Overvoid, and The Source to be the same entity."

I believe the tweet where Morrison said this is fake.
Click to expand...
Huh. Does that hamper the op's argument in some way? Are we just chasing coat tails? (Idk DC, so that is why I ask.)
 
Didn't that straight up come from an IGN interview or something?

@Matt

I know. I'm just mad that so many people ignore any other big verse with an apparent following (not just DC. There's many others), yet hop on a DB or Naruto revision to discuss stuff that's been debunked multiple times. It's just how things are, but it's irritating.
 
SinsofMan said:
Huh. Does that hamper the op's argument in some way? Are we just chasing coat tails? (Idk DC, so that is why I ask.)
Click to expand...
I wasnt addressing OP, this was in regard to merging these characters which isn't rooted in anything concrete.
 
I wasnt addressing OP, this was in regard to merging these characters which isn't rooted in anything concrete.

Gotcha, sorry for the misunderstanding.
 
It's from here.

IGN Comics: So that kind of answers my question, which is that the Monitors all seem like analogs for storytellers. There seems to be this never-ending cycle of the stories affecting the storytellers and the storytellers affecting the stories and on and on.
Morrison: Yeah, it's a bit of that. It's also the idea that they're like angels as well. For me, the cool, essential idea of all stories being real creates this great cosmology to play with. It's the notion that the white page itself is a void, and in the context of the DC Universe, well that's God or The Source. In the white page, or the void, anything can happen, everything is possible. As I dug down closer to the very root of the activity I find myself engaged in as a career, I was thinking "what is the basis of the comic book story? What actually is it?"
In the case of comic book stories, it's the war between white page and ink. And who's to say that the page might want that particular story drawn on it? [laughs] What happens if the page is a bit pissed off at the story that's drawn on it? So I thought of the page as God. The idea being that the Overvoid ― as we called it in Final Crisis - of the white page as a space is sort of God. And it's condensing stories out of itself because it finds inside its own gigantic white space, self-absorbed pristine consciousness, it finds this little stain or mark, this DC Multiverse somebody has 'drawn'. And it starts investigating, and it's just shocked with what it sees, with all the crazy activity and signifying going on in there. It then tries to protect itself from the seething contact with 'story' and imagines a race of beings, 'angels' or 'monitors' (another word for angel, of course) to function as an interface between its own giant eternal magnificence and this tiny, weird crawling anthill of life and significance that is the DC Multiverse.
IGN Comics: [laughs] That's fascinating. How does the whole world of "Limbo" from Superman Beyond fit into the idea of the white page as God?
Morrison: 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.
It's less a literal statement that God = Void = Source but that these concepts are equivalent. He also compares the Monitors to writers and also to Angels, while God and the Void can be seen as the source itself (The page).

I wouldn't hold it as sacred in understanding what the Overvoid actually is, thought it does confirm the "Literal White Canvas / Page" interpretation as being what he intended. Under that logic, all characters from DC spring from the Overvoid as they are fictional entities that were drawn on the page.

Including The Presence, which has been confirmed to have been born from the Void / Minds of Mortals a few times, so he is not an uncreated supreme being.
 
The problem seems arbitrary, the very nature of the Overvoid means everything in DC including the Presence is it and the reverse anyway even if it's contradictory. That there's a dozen different avatars or equals or manifestations or aspects or Michael+Lucifer(+Gabriel?) or whatever of the Presence while also sometimes seemingly being the actual supreme being with no equals just reinforces the illogical dream/story logic nature that the Overvoid is operating on, because "omnipotent" characters and concepts tend to throw logic to the wind.

Yes, this sounds dumb because it is, but it's a built-in excuse for contradictory stuff when writers write or say contradictory things about this subject unless some DC writer directly changes the nature of the Overvoid, and I don't think that's happened or is likely to happen for a while.

For thread purposes, I agree with Matt, the Presence has too many problems with the whole "not being fully Omniscient, having equals in power, admitting he's not Omnipotent and that he was created by another, being defeated and threatened a few times, and even temporarily killed" thing, and it's not just the case in Vertigo, these things have happened in regular DC as well several times, so he should stay 1-A.

Maybe we should merge The Writer and Overvoid page though, since it seems more like they're both parts of the same process. Could be fun to see since it might be the only profile with two tier 0 keys, which would kind of look like 0/0, which is pretty appropriate for a Tier 0.
 
Tier 0 isn't even omnipotent. Omniscience is not a requirement either.
 
Well, I still think that the Ostrander and DeMatteis regular DC Comics version of The Presence seems to be tier 0, whereas the Vertigo version is not, and that The Writer as the supreme being of DC is a fanfiction interpretation, and should be deleted.

I see no reason why DeMatteis spiritual interpretation should be any less relevant than that of the atheist Carey, especially as we use his infinite-dimensional cosmology as a basis for our scaling of the Monitors, whereas Morrison seems to use quantum theory.

If it is any help, here are all of the relevant scans and interviews from the threads that I linked to earlier.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/02/03/inside-the-mind-of-grant-morrison?page=2

https://www.cbr.com/dan-didio-digs-into-brightest-days-finale/

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18]
 
I was also busy with a lot of work, this thread was over-rushed because my target objective was to lay out the ideas. Hence, I was late, I will read the rest of the thread that was added in my absence.

But to further expand on what Ant said, Holly Black's version of the Presence is likely going to be not canon.

The Presence in DCU is not dead, in any means by any way as he is referred to by name in Rebirth. And Sandman 2018 is literally tied with the ending of Dark Knights Metal as it started and ended with Lucien missing his book there, as Lucifer is already still trying to leave his father's Creation.
 
There was an unspecified timeskip with Lucifer that resulted in the character losing his memory.
 
Well, in any case, Holly Black's "Dark Presence" was stated to not be the real deal, but rather a pretender, both in the story and in an unspecified writer or editor reply, so we should stop referring to it as such.
 
Also, has anybody inspected all of the images that I linked to?
 
Okay. Thanks.
 
Okay. What does the preview text say?
 
Also Matt, are you reading the points being made here?

Firstly, Yes, The Overvoid was stated to be The Overmonitor in FC. Which already debunks where you are going with this but sure.

he quite literally refers to the Presence or the Source as "God" and then quite literally says that the Void itself is God, which clearly shows the notion that all 3 beings are meant to be the same, singular entity. God.

This scan still stands, The Monitors are referring to the Overmonitor and The Source being the same.

The Presence is God, God is meant to be above all, I don't even need to explain how obvious this point is, When Chronos broke into heaven and wanted to get the power of the Source, he said that it is the power of the presence, which I again don't have to explain.


WM states that he feels "The Source" beyond the gates of heaven, and then Michael explains that' where God is chillin and planning everything.

I went more indepth with debunks here

The Presence was never created by mortals, we have made a dozen counter arguments throughout this thread and I don't see a rebuttal, just denial.

"It's less a literal statement that God = Void = Source but that these concepts are equivalent. He also compares the Monitors to writers and also to Angels, while God and the Void can be seen as the source itself (The page)."

refer to my first comment in this thread.

"The Presence was born in the Void"

since it's obviously being agreed were are going off Dematteis here, look at this scan.

A single scan (only one has been shown throughout all of comics) from a nobody means nothing (talking about synnar and what not), the pralaya stuff has already been debunked in other threads incase you're wondering.
 
Oh yes Ant! I agree, I forgot about that. That wasn't even the real Presence. Perhaps in addition of adding my notes that the Presence's ORIGINS changes in DC from Vertigo, we should that wasn't the real Presence as well.
 
Well, Holly Black's version definitely wasn't the real Presence, so that should be mentioned.
 
Antvasima said:
Well, Holly Black's version definitely wasn't the real Presence, so that should be mentioned.
Click to expand...
Are we even sure about that? The comic left it entirely ambiguous though he likely wasn't. Nevertheless, the real Presence did kill himself in that.
 
Also there is a massive problem currently here with putting more value on twitter conversations than the actual text.
 
I agree with you about Twitter, but he was stated to not be the original Presence within the story as well, so I do think that our pages should be updated to stop referring to him that way.
 
As for The Source and The Presence = They are two distinct depictions of the same high concept, God in this case. One is impersonal and unconscious and the other is personal and conscious. Neither is greater than the other. Though they differ enough that I think multiple profiles for the two are acceptable, as they are not quite 100% the same.

Now, the Overvoid isn't The Presence nor The Source and that idea is pretty much unarguable.
 
I dunno. The actual comics correlate the Void and the Source. Even the map states the Source lies in the Beyond (beyond the Source Wall).

But, meh, what do I know. 2010s DC is just a mess imo.
 
@Matthew

Well, Morrison seemed to disagree with you.

In any case, I would greatly appreciate if you would be reasonable and allow us to get rid of The Writer as DC's supreme being. It is basically a fanfiction character mishmash of unrelated concepts.
 
In any case, I would greatly appreciate if you would be reasonable and allow us to get rid of The Writer as DC's supreme being. It is basically a fanfiction character mishmash of unrelated concepts.

I don't really see a reason for that? The Writer is basically the logical culmination of what the Overvoid is supposed to be in the first place, Grant Morrison himself has already alluded to a force who drew all of DC Comics into its infinite blankness in an interview, so I am not quite sure why you are saying the Writer is a fanfictional character - He is just a product of connecting the dots and figuring out how Grant Morrison's established cosmology functions, which is different from a straight up fan-made concept.
 
Also I'm looking through your list of scans, Ant...

  • First Scan serves no purpose imo. It's just the creation of the Archangels by the Presence.
  • Second Scan is interesting. The Presence states that the form he is appearing as is just one aspect among many. This is something that we already knew for a while. See The Hand, The Voice, The Word / Logos, The Source, and The Presence itself. All different forms of God.
  • Yes, The Spectre merged with The Source, this has happened a few times and it is a valid scan that makes it clear that concepts like The Source and the Word are parts of the same thing.
  • The Morrison tweet is fake. I already analyzed the Morrison interview in-depth in an above post.
  • I don't see the point of Didio's interview being linked.
  • The "body you chosen to dress in" simply refers to the old man form the Presence took. It's not a scan of anything.
  • The fact that the Presence made the sword which killed himself isn't worth bringing up at all. It doesn't change the fact that he can be killed with sufficient power.
  • The attempted "Demiurge" links are pure nonsense and should be disregarded, as has been brought up here before.
  • The Spectre and Mawu scan is interesting, as it once again reiterates that the Voice and the Word are different names for God... But it says that they are "floating in the Void", making it clear that Void and God aren't the same being.
  • I don't see why the person brought up the Great Darkness, God's negative equal opposite, it's just more evidence that the Presence isn't Omnipotent.
 
I'm sorry, but can I kindly ask that we stop making multiple threads for similar topics? I made a DC revisions thread for a reason. And counting this one, there's three threads discussing DC Cosmology. I'm a busy woman, and I can't keep up with this + multiple other threads and conversations. Sorry :/
 
@Matthew

I was thinking about the interview in which I think he mentioned something similar.

@Ultima

Morrison's self-insert character was never presented as DC's supreme being when it was used in Animal Man in the late 1980s, and was never remotely referred to in conjunction with Final Crisis in the late 2000s. We even used the name from a John Ostrander Suicide Squad story in which The Writer was just presented as a regular character that was easily slaughtered by Circe's werebeasts.

I would really appreciate if you and Matthew try to be reasonable concerning this character, as it is based on pure headcanon and speculation, and is the sort of thing that gives our wiki reliability a very bad reputation.

Can't we just treat the Overvoid as DC's supreme being, and leave it at that?
 
@Matthew

Okay. Thank you for checking through the scans.

I suppose that The Presence will have to remain 1-A then, although we should stop treating him and the Dark Presence that Lucifer sliced up as the same character.
 
Sera EX said:
I'm sorry, but can I kindly ask that we stop making multiple threads for similar topics? I made a DC revisions thread for a reason. And counting this one, there's three threads discussing DC Cosmology. I'm a busy woman, and I can't keep up with this + multiple other threads and conversations. Sorry :/
Click to expand...
I closed the Sixth Dimension thread. Two is better than three.
 
I posted a link to the previous discussion in your new thread.
 
I completely agree with Ultima by the way and think that the Writer is a reasonable interpretation of the cosmology.
 
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