Comprehensive DC Comics Revision: Clearing up everything Monitor-related

Intro

For a while now, there has been intense, repeated discussion on what to do about the Monitor race, Mandrakk/Thought Robot, the recent revelations from the Snyder/Tynion duo regarding DC's cosmology, the Monitor/Anti-Monitor/World Forger trio, and Perpetua. This thread will address each of those subjects and hopefully stabilize this section of the wiki.

In case anyone is wondering why this is so long, or why so much context is provided to the point of excess, it's because I deemed it necessary. This entire subject seems to rank among the most heavily debated, confused, and complex part of DC lore. Better that literally everything about it be listed and explained in a single location than for it to be told piecemeal by people debating in the comments.

Limbo, the Monitor Sphere and the Sixth dimension

First, let's look at how Limbo and Nil are primarily depicted, in Final Crisis:

• Limbo is reached by running out of Multiverse to travel to. It is called "nowhere" by Captain Adam and its inhabitants. They don't even have "such a thing as time to waste". There are no stories in Limbo.

• The quote in the above scan about the "music being over" is important. The Ultima Thule travels throughout dimensions by "playing the harp", with different "tunes" corresponding to different universes/planes of existence. The music being over means Limbo is where the Multiverse stops, which is further supported below.

• Limbo is the last outpost of existence

• Grant Morrison states that "Limbo is the last outpost of the DCU proper before the archetypal Monitor World and the Overvoid"

• Nil is the "blank", the "gone", where "form and meaning surrender to the Overvoid". It is a realm broadcasted to by Captain Adam after he realizes there are no dualities. It is "beyond reality". It was also literally created in the Overvoid, around the Thought Robot, which was floating in the Overvoid. This was stated again by the book of Limbo: Mandrakk's sepulchre, and therefore the rest of Nil, exist in the Void outside the Multiverse

• Scale, space, and time are different, more profound, more meaningful, in Nil. This is linked to the above quote about meaning surrendering to the Overvoid. Everything in Nil is the thoughts of the Overvoid. "Time" only entered Nil after contact with stories. I use quotations because Nil is an archetypal realm, and "time" is the clockwork pattern in the sky, not a literal physics-based temporal dimension as is the case within the multiverse proper. As shown above, those ended at Limbo.

Second, let's look at how Limbo and Nil are described in Multiversity:

• Limbo is again called the furthest edge of the manifest DC universe. The Monitor Sphere is again (implied, not stated this time) referred to as a realm of pure thought, as the Source Wall is stated to be the limit even to thought.

Third, let's look at how Nil is depicted in the Unexpected and Justice League:

• Nil is explicitly not in the Multiverse. It was only reached by Hawkman and his allies because a unique Nth Metal isotope was infused with Ultramenstruum and resonated with the same substance in Nil, and it "ruptured reality" to get there. The only characters actually able to reach Nil on their own were Mandrakk, and Bad Samarita, a multiverse-level being granted his powers by the World Forge. In case anyone has forgotten, the World Forge is pure possibility, Element X, the substance used to shatter the entire Source Wall. As much as I agree that this was shoddy writing, it's incorrect to use it as proof of a retcon for Nil, due to the context within the story.

• The Justice League only got to Nil because the World Forger took them there. Again, not a retcon for Nil, given his nature as a being born directly of the Overvoid, which is shown in Section 3 below.

• The Monitor Sphere exists at the edge of things. Again, matches how Nil has always been depicted. If you're confused about what Mar Novu means by "current universal structure", remember that we learned there have been two iterations of the DCU. The first, made by Perpetua, and the second, when her creation was remade upon her sealing, without her taint.

Fourth, let's look at how the Sixth Dimension is depicted:

• Assuming this is true and not falsified, it confirms what already seemed to be the case when the 5th Dimension was described as imagination and energy flowing through the multiverse. The Sixth Dimension is clearly not referring to literal six spatiotemporal dimensions because space and time don't even apply to it. The multiverse being described as 4D (which would be a major outlier descriptor anyways if taken literally), is also referring to these "governing layers", not the specific number of spatiotemporal dimensions. The message popped up on VSB recently, and I found its origin in this thread on spacebattles, where the user offered to give their login info to an admin to prove it was true, although no further updates have been given.

• The Sixth Dimension can only be reached by non-Monitors after the Source Wall is broken, and is completely beyond Mxyzptlk's perception despite him existing completely outside time

• The Sixth Dimension is a realm beyond the imagination of almost all living things. This ties into how the Source Wall is the limit even to thought, and how the Sixth Dimension could only be reached once the Source Wall was broken.

• The Sixth Dimension is where the Multiverse was created

• The Sixth Dimension is again depicted as a realm totally beyond the entire DC Multiverse

This last thing is relatively minor but I thought it would be worth mentioning. In Grant Morrison's work, the Overvoid is the literal blank page and panels are often used to display dimensional stuff.

• In Multiversity the holes in the multiverse caused by Nix Uotan's rubix cube were depicted as more and more panels forming, revealing more of the white page beneath

• In Superman Beyond, the Monitor-Mind's erasing of the Monitors involved the literal panels being eaten away to reveal the white underneath.

Snyder is heavily inspired by Morrison, collaborated with him for Metal, and is actually paying serious respect to minor aspects of Morrison's work, which I show later on. So I want you to pay attention to the top of this page. It shows Perpetua and her sons momentarily sticking their top halves out of the Sixth Dimension panel and into the white page. The panel is drawn weirdly enough that I think it may have been deliberate, implying that the Sixth Dimension is, in fact, in the Void, something that could have already been easily inferred, given its existence outside the Source Wall.

What can we conclude?

• 1) Limbo is consistently stated, including on the current map in use, to be the last outpost of DC's actual multiverse (as in, space and time). It likely qualifies as a true void, as it has no proper time or space like the rest of the multiverse does.

• 2) The Monitor Sphere is an archetypal realm of thought that was made out of the Overvoid, as it was made around the Thought Robot which was floating in the Void.

• 3) The Sixth Dimension is a layer of existence beyond the former two, existing outside the Source Wall completely. It is outside Creation and is where Creation was made.

Perpetua and her Sons
In the Sixth Dimension, Perpetua created her sons by rending them from the Overvoid. She then puts the finishing touches on the first version of the Multiverse. This is not only further evidence that the Sixth Dimension exists in the Void, it also shows that Snyder/Tynion are paying respect to Morrison's prior work.

See, there are a lot of people on the internet that believe Dax Novu split into the Monitor and Anti-Monitor due to this sca. Except the split happened after the Monitor and Anti-Monitor were "born of the Overvoid."

Here's the list of events in order: Perpetua begins making the Flaw. Perfection notices the Flaw, naming itself Monitor-Mind. Perpetua rends the Overvoid to create her sons from it and finishes shaping her Creation. The Overvoid is completely beyond time, but within the Flaw things are happening. Perpetua is sealed and the Flaw is remade into the second version (what Mar Novu calls the "current universal structure"), without her taint. The Overvoid acts to contain the Flaw, bringing forth Science Monitor Dax Novu. Novu contacts the Flaw and is split into two, leaving behind the Thought Robot, while the Flaw is scabbed over in the divine metals.

What the hell are Dax Novu and the Thought Robot? And how does the Monitor race fit in?
Dax Novu is completely unrelated to Mar Novu. The revelation of the Monitors being splinters of Mar Novu does not effect Dax Novu himself.

• He was the original probe used by Monitor-Mind to investigate the Flaw. Why does he look like Mar Novu? Because he was designed by Monitor-Mind to blend i, and Mar Novu had already been rent from the Overvoid itself, so Monitor-Mind presumably designed Dax Novu's appearance and name after him. Dax Novu's first encounter with the Flaw was this scene from COIE. He was NEVER directly connected to Mar Novu or Mobius. Monitor-Mind's feeling of contamination from the contact, as well its curiosity toward the stories in the Flaw, split the probe into what we later saw as Dax Novu/Mandrakk, and the Thought Robot.

• This is why the later Monitor race had the legend that Dax Novu left behind the Thought Robot as his final gift, and why Mandrakk and Thought Robot are complete opposites: Thought Robot, made of pure thought, is a conceptual being representing the "good" side of every dichotomy. While Mandrakk, the opposite to Thought Robot, is a conceptual being representing the "bad" side of every dichotomy. Remember, before naming itself, Monitor-Mind was simply non-dual Perfection, and the original Dax Novu was a literal piece of that Perfection before he split into Mandrakk and Thought Robot.

Now, getting to the Monitor race: when you really get down to the nitty-gritty, Snyder's retcon is actually fairly minor.

• We've known for a while that the Monitors were thoughts of the Monitor-Mind, and their story named them as descendants of the original immense, unknowable Monitor

• I had to actually take a second, close look at Multiversity to notice this: Grant Morrison did not actually say outright that the Monitor race were splinters of Dax Novu. The quote "divided, deranged" comes directly after the panels telling of the probe's division into the Thought Robot and the Dax Novu we later see, who was corrupted into Mandrakk while exploring the Multiverse.

• Nix Uotan is called the "son of the Monitor Novu" by Highfather. The narration box in the "comic book" also calls Nix Uotan, after his race's passing, the "sole son of Novu".

• The Monitors are now called splinters of Mar Novu

• At the end of Final Crisis, Monitor-Mind erased all Monitors aside from Nix Uota, and Mar Novu would later reform in his entirety. For some reason, there's a misconception among many that Monitors can't exist in the Overvoid. That's completely false, they are literal pieces of the Overvoid. The Monitor-Mind actively erased them.

Basically what happened is, Grant Morrison left a few semantic holes in his description of the Monitors that allowed Snyder to perform a super-precise, sneaky retcon that technically might not even qualify for true retcon-status. The Monitors are still descendants of the first immense, unknowable Monitor, because Mar Novu himself is literally a piece of the Overvoid, as shown in the previous section. Nix Uotan still qualifies for his "son of Novu" epithet because Grant Morrison didn't specify Dax Novu, just Novu. The only assumption we have to make is that the reason for Mar Novu's split into the Monitor race was the Monitor-Mind. This even makes sense, because Mar Novu's true state was born directly from the Overvoid as well.

Tiering Perpetua and the true forms of her sons

• All of them are depicted as larger than the entire DC Multiverse, more than once

• Perpetua made her sons from the Overvoid by rending pieces from it and shaping those pieces into beings

Tearing pieces from the Overvoid and shaping them into beings should qualify as a 1-A feat given the Overvoid's status as a Tier 0 being. The true forms of the three brothers in the Sixth Dimension are also 1-A, partially due to the Sixth Dimension's nature as a realm beyond even the Monitor Sphere, but more importantly the fact that they are literal pieces of a Tier 0 being. Their true selves, by definition, as independent pieces of Monitor-Mind the Overvoid which transcends all concepts of spatial and temporal dimensions, qualify them for 1-A.

Tiering Dax Novu, Thought Robot, and the Monitor race
Combine all of the quotes about the nature of the Monitor Sphere in Section 2, with all the scans below:

• Monitors are beings of pure thought, as is the Thought Robot

• Monitors are the thoughts of the Monitor-Mind

• The Monitor race are condensed stories from Monitor-Mind, made as an interface between it and the Flaw

• The Monitors, the Monitor Sphere, and their story is the result of Monitor-Mind inventing a story to go with the Thought Robot

• Monitors are Primal Forms in a Fundamental World

• Zillo Valla calls the Monitors the Masters of the Overvoid (obvious flowery language aside, this is yet another reference to the Monitor Sphere being made of the Overvoid)

• In their true state, Monitors are smaller but relative in size to "all of creation"

• In their true state, Monitors withstand at close range the energy explosions of the clash between Mandrakk and the Thought Robot

• They can alter both their scale and pitch at will, explaining why they can become infinitely smaller and less powerful and go from being comparable in size to the Orrery to living as "germs" within the Multiverse

• Monitors have idea-mining tech that operates in "concept space", and used it to construct Earth-35

Everything put together, I firmly believe the Monitors qualify for 1-A. The Monitors are literal pieces of the Overvoid split from a larger piece of the Overvoid, which transcends all concepts of spatial and temporal dimensions. They exist as primal forms in an archetypal realm that exists outside Limbo, which itself is where all physics-based spatiotemporal dimensions end.

1-A especially applies to Mandrakk and Thought Robot, who are two halves of Science Monitor Dax Novu, the original piece of Monitor-Mind that probed the Flaw.

Tiering the lesser-dimensional forms of the three brothers (and Barbatos)
The brothers are obviously not Tier 1 when they are functioning within Creation. Whether you feel that should be the case or not, it's true. Entering the germ worlds makes them infinitely smaller and lesser. We see this take place with the Monitors, like when they exiled Rox Ogama to the germ worlds where he could do no real harm to Creation as a whole, or when they condemned Nix Uotan to powerless, mortal existence as a "germ."

Nothing major needs to change from the way things are now, but I do want to update the justifications. Mobius is rated 2-A for matching Mar Novu, who is rated 2-A for being empowered by infinite universes. I find the latter justification dubious at best, because simply being empowered by infinite universes isn't actually proof of being able to perform 2-A feats.

What we should do is:

• Use the fact that, before any positive matter universes were destroyed and absorbed, Base Mobius released an attack that struck all worlds in all times, reducing infinite universes to just five, in a finite amount of time, as the first to be destroyed was Earth-Three at the beginning of the story. And in case anyone is a bit rusty on the story and going, "but what about that cannon and stuff?" The cannon was built because Mar Novu's dying act was to make a netherverse from his energy, absorbing and protecting the remaining universes, while his tuning forks partially merged them, fortifying them. The original antimatter wave was all Mobius' doing.

• Mar Novu perfectly matched Base Mobius in power, which will be his new justification for being 2-A. Him being linked to infinite positive matter universes can stay as supporting evidence. The Monitor's profile also needs many touch-ups which are minor enough to handle here (his name, age, intelligence stamina, etc.)

• Scale Alpheus' lower-dimensional key to his brothers. Barbatos remains the same as he is now due to killing that version of Alpheus.

Mobius actually needs further keys added for his Post-52 weakened incarnation and his Post-Flashpoint incarnation, as well as a general revamp and added abilities, but I'm not including those here because they solely affect him and are better suited to their own thread.

Final Summary / TL;DR
Lower-dimensional versions of the Brothers and Barbatos stay the same as they are now, just with updated justifications. Their true selves, as well as Dax Novu, Thought Robot, and the Monitor race, all exist beyond the Multiverse-proper as literal pieces of a Tier 0 being that transcends all concepts of spatial and temporal dimensions. They have the same beyond-dimensional nature as Monitor-Mind because they are simply independent pieces of the Overvoid moving around in it. They don't "merely exist" in a 1-A realm, the nature of their existence as living pieces of the Overvoid is by definition 1-A. Perpetua, who deserves a profile at this point, performed a 1-A feat herself and is superior to the true selves of her sons, so she is also 1-A. When it comes time to see her lower-dimensional self in conflict, as I'm sure that will happen in the next few months, a new key can be added accordingly.

Wow great work! That make sense.

Great work as always Prince.

Havind read through the thread before it was posted, I agree with everything proposed here.

Good write up especially regarding Limbo and Nil. I guess the Snyder cosmology was never gonna 100% fit the previous Morrison set up, but I think you did a good job of connecting the pieces based on what we got so far. Also I dont think we should use that Twitter DM as valid evidence even though it makes sense.

I do have minor disagreement with your chronological events regarding Perpetua and her Sons, also I think you mixed up rend and rent, but I think your conclusion is valid, so I won't touch much on that. We don't got much on Perpetua in action since she was just reborn but we should get a lot more insight in Justice: Doom War. One suggestion, I think you should make a lesser-dimensional key for The Monitors like Nix Uotan like you propose for the brothers for similar reasons.

Holy heck my dude, you killed it. I'm super proud of you and I kinda apologize for thinking in the back of mind mind that you were downgrading the god tiers to Low 1-C lol.

Great work. Heres hoping it wont get removed again

Thanks for the kind words guys.

@Zensum

Yeah, that's the idea. They don't have profiles on the wiki yet, but I've gotten started.

I am going to barf reading this rn

go to discord rn

A long wall of text. But after reading through it, it all make sense.

Lots of info but beatifully done. I can't really disagree with the evidence here.

I had known of this already and I offer my full support.

This is super precise and I agree with pretty much everything. Fully support this.

1-A batman via 10th metal

Would being torn from the overvoid be inherently 1-A? After all, all that exists is technically a part of it.

This makes sense.

I must ask, but this means Perpetua predates most of DC reality then?

Also, what does this mean those who operate unimpeded within Limbo despite not being denizens like Superman and Animal Man?

Everything here looks good and makes sense to me, good job POTM.

Yobo Blue said:

Also, what does this mean those who operate unimpeded within Limbo despite not being denizens like Superman and Animal Man?

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Very good Type 4 Acausality maybe?

Or some form of resistence.

Or it could be looked at as an outlier/PIS.

Type 4 Acausality is something that all DC Characters within the context of the plot.

Though only those who are aware of it can actually benefit

I made a thread on this in the past, and it got accepted. There's a bit more information here supporting it than before, though, and I definitely agree to it.

Another excelent post. I agree with the conclusions.

Some questions from a person off-site:

"1. What would the first and second dimensions be given the theory that 5D = imagination and 6D = outside existence?

2. Whero do the spatio-temporal dimensions reside in? 3-D or 4-D?

3. How many confirmed spatial dimensions are there? How are they described that helps lend credence to what the author purportedly said?

4. Where does the Godsphere stand in this? How many spatial dimensions in it and is it 3-D or 4-D planewise?

5. Can you list for me the hierarchy of cosmic beings from the top players in the cosmology to Godsphere New Gods with their dimensional level or multiversal level?"

The DC Multiverse as a whole is like a layered cake. At the bottom, there is all the spacial dimensions and the different universes. This is how Captain Adam can see in 8 spacial dimensions.

My opinion has already been made clear. Good on you Prince

I also think that this is a very thorough job that seems to make sense.

What are your objections Hykuu?

the barf thing was a joke but after discussing this on discord we just agreed to disagree

the points I made were

- All dimensions don't stop in Limbo? The Monitor Sphere was literally called a higher dimension and space time were stated to exist in Limbo a dozen times, it being a archetypal realm only proves my point, as that just means Limbo would also have space time in it due it being a lesser version of the monitor sphere. And grant has no idea what he's talking about, first he says stories don't happen in Limbo yet literally makes an entire animal man issue in Limbo and says all stories are within limbo, he says matter breaks down in Limbo yet says matter stops existing beyond the speed force wall, and then you have CAS stating the monitor sphere has matter.

- Being thoughts embodied from the Monitor Mind means NOTHING, Everything in God's creation in an aspect of him, everything in the mythos are also thoughts of yog sothoth and azathoth embodied, everyone in marvel has a fraction of TOAA within them and are also aspects of him, etc. It all follows the same logic.

But yah since we agreed to disagree it just depends on who agrees with the thread

@Hykuu

I'll give my side as well, just for the record (not trying to restart the debate part of our convo I swear lol. I'm gonna be afk today anyway)

So basically I want to go by Limbo's characteristics in Final Crisis and not Animal Man long before it, although we didn't actually go over any Animal Man scans so that was left a bit unspecified. Regarding the story thing and Limbo, I feel that's taking things a bit literally because being completely literal, obviously there's a story happening in Limbo, because we're reading Superman and friends going to Limbo and reading the book and fighting Mandrakk's nanotech. I'm 90% sure it's a flowery way of referring to Grant's other statement, that Limbo is a world of memory. Thought Robot's statement was about the veils of matter parting and clearing when Superman's consciousness first activated, which I think is pretty clearly just referring to how Superman is opening his eyes to a realm without matter. Since it's directly stated to be pure thought right afterward.

About the Monitor-Mind, we got into an enormous discussion about the difference between those situations and the Monitors, with me choosing to interpret a phrase as given and Hykuu choosing to see it as metaphor, and discussing the contextually different nature of the Flaw being made, which Monitor-Mind didn't sense, versus the brothers being made, which was otherwise. Our discussion basically devolved into arguing a semantic point, so as he said we agreed to disagree.

Okay. Thank you for the explanation.

@Ultima Reality I'll touch on some of this. You're not really gonna get a good explicit answer to 1 and 2, without a lot of fan theory, as trying to make sense of all the writer interpretations of the cosmology is a functionally impossible task.

1. If we take it at face value, Snyder Interp is (1D Point, 2D Line, 3D Material, 4D Time, 5D Imagination, 6D Control Room). While Morrisons Interp works akin to M theory. They aren't explicitly compatible at all unless you make assumptions like OP is doing here which I suppose is fine for our purposes because it makes sense.

2. They don't reside in either. Snyder's system seems to start as regular physics from 1-4 then 5 and 6 are treated as something else entirely different. 5D in this Interp is Imagination, which permeates all layers of the multiverse to some degree (The Bleed), so you can assume all the physics related to spatial dimensions are in-between 4 and 5 IMO. In Morrisons they would just work like numerically 1D - nD.

3 Varies really, but we have an innumerable dimensions statement accepted on the profiles rn.

4 God Sphere Layer itself exists outside the multiverse per Multiversity map. But its hard to assign this a specific dimensionality. Maybe others can give input here.

5 This would be a diffiuclt task if we are factoring in everything.

Yeah, we should worry about hierarchy when we get everything sorted out.

Also, this is probably a stupid question... but would this change Mxyzptlks tier in anyway? If the the 4th and 5th Dimension is "between all spatial dimensions" does this imply Imps are stronger than we though?

@Jared

Maybe. In "World's Funnest" he destroyed the entire DC multiverse.

Jared1111 said:

snip

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Not necessarily, based on Mxy's explainatio he calls imagination the blood of the multiverse that flows between realms. He's most likely refering to bleedspace which we know rotates in the 5D according to Multiversity. There's also the bleed drills pictured which connect to the higher realms.

Yeah, that and out of Worlds Funnest he's never shown anything above 5D capabilities without assistance. (Though Worlds Funnest Mxy did mention destroying all numbered dimensions I think)

Probably for the best, can't imagine Superman having 6-D Reality Warping resistance.

This looks goooooood

So, Outerversal Monitors (in the Sixth Dimension and Monitor Sphere) and Perpetua. How would this upgrade affect the Source? The wiki has it as a likely 1-A, but we know that it was the Source who created Perpetua and gave her the Forces she used to create the DC Multiverse.

Question is this will affect the tier of the true form of the New Gods and IMP too since the Fifth Dimension is not a spatial dimension?

Wokistan said:

Would being torn from the overvoid be inherently 1-A? After all, all that exists is technically a part of it.

Click to expand...

Still have this question. Not sure that it's inherently 1-A.

Pretty sure there is a clear difference between being just a story drawn on the blank canvas and being a literal fragment of the canvas itself, which presumably has a nature that is similar to it in some way, although in a far lesser scale.

so is it more that it's formed from the same whatever that makes up the overvoid?

It seems so, yes.