Originally posted by Endless Mike
Flash is the only being who can travel to other universes at will now?
I Think he means about what Barry gonna do in COIE when he ran so fast to stop that anti-matter weapon.
That confused me since this event is taking place in post-flashpoint and this is the Pre-Crisis Flash before COIE happens.
After rereading Multiversity a few more times, I had some random thoughts on The Gentry that I figured I may as well post here...
(Part 1/2)
We'll start with how Morrison perceives the 5th dimension, along with its denizens. In his eyes, they are metatextual thought-forms... Pure imagination. He has made his opinion on the matter clear over the years...
That's why it was noted that 5d tech is powered by "pure imagination"--and even emits "thought pollution":
http://i.imgur.com/OxcudtP.jpg
And when Batman asked Bat-Mite if he was an alien hyper-imp from the fifth dimension, or just his imagination, this was Bat-Mite's response:
http://i.imgur.com/xZTNfFJ.jpg
"Imagination IS the Fifth dimension."
That's why 5D denizens can also create metatextual tech/thought-forms(ie. "Super-Doomsday"😉...
"I'm an unstoppable killer franchise from a parallel reality! A thought that gets bigger and bigger the more you think it.":
http://i.imgur.com/SdD7Ikm.jpg
"I'm the thought of a bigger Superman [...] I'm powered by a simple corporate directive: annihilate the competition!":
http://i.imgur.com/QbqJ0lT.jpg
And very recently, Mxy had a page-long dialogue explaining his existence as an imagination-based thought-form:
http://i.imgur.com/eR9BixR.jpg
"I don't need a body. I've lived on, and will live on, in heads. The heads of the authors who write me. I have no vocal cords, and yet right now, you're hearing my voice. I'm living in your head right now [...] Ideas are agency. We are Gods. You are just puppets. As long as there's one of you, there'll be a hundred of us."
...So perhaps the 'super-science' they use in the 5th dimension IS imagination..? mmm
And if you're wondering where Morrison's opinion of the 5th dimension comes from; it stems from an LSD trip he had many years ago:
After joking with the room about hangovers from partying on Saturday night, Morrison revealed his spotlight would function as a Q&A where he'd answer absolutely any question the audience posed. This statement was immediately put to the test when the first audience member to the floor's microphone asked Morrison to describe what the fifth dimension -- a dimension Morrison has claimed to have experienced -- looks like."It's the start of the day!" Morrison said as the audience laughed. However, his teasing demeanor gave way to seriousness as he began to describe his encounter in detail.
"If you can imagine infinite blue in every direction, this really good, azure blue and through it were kind of red lines and the red lines were so close it looked like frameworks and it could appear or disappear and it seemed the things that lived there, these blob things, [that] would plug into these systems of moving grids and take information from it and put information into it," Morrison said, adding it was hard to describe as humans do not posses a fourth dimensional language.
"It could be the interior of a cell as much as it could be the fifth dimension -- but it felt like a place and it felt better and more real than this as I'm sitting, with much more high-definition, better colors, more emotional content. This," Morrison continued, gesturing around to indicate real life, "feels flat in comparison."
Adding that in the dimension he saw our universe, which looked like a "bowl of sphincters," Morrison said he was told by a being the dimension was how universes were built and the planet Earth was an incubator for the beings' children. The timeless nature of the dimension also made him realize the past still exists independent of human ability perceive -- much like how comic book characters move forward in their stories, but the panels and grids still exist on the page.
"So if you're getting any of this shit," Morrison added, suddenly very self-conscious as the audience laughed. Despite trying various psychedelic drugs in the '90s to recreate the experience, which he had while sober, the writer admitted "none of them have ever taken me anyplace close to that -- really I have no explanation for it," Morrison said.
Lol
____________________________________________
Now lets have a gander at Morrison's Map of the Multiverse again...
I first want to premise this portion of my post by saying that from an in-universe POV, the Map/Guidebook is literally the blueprint for the whole of DC creation... It is literally how the DC continuum appears from 'above'. That was actually one of the most essential plot-points of Multiversity.
Suffice to say: the above fact was reiterated multiple times during the story:
http://i.imgur.com/AeLJCei.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/sfUiPIQ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/iFMxqjv.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/QOsGy5C.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/5B4inm7.jpg
In fact, after HARBINGER AI's memory banks were erased by Hellmachine(of The Gentry), the Map/Guidebook was used to completely restore her all-encompassing cosmological knowledge in the space of a few panels:
http://i.imgur.com/jKSLDpc.jpg
Here is the Map itself for a refresher(it will be very important a bit later):
*Note how the outermost rim of the Map is akin to a spherical RAINBOW.
*You'll also note that the 5th dimension isn't listed on the Map, as it, being pure imagination, transcends the Map all together.
____________________________________________
As for The Gentry, here is how Morrison himself described them:
"In a world where everything is protected -- people live in houses with locked doors, they put their valuables in safes, they keep their information safe behind passwords and antiviral controls -- we allow pretty much anything into our heads. Particularly since the Internet age has really got its teeth in and we're starting to see some of the effects it's having on people.I think, to some extent, that's a glut of information and a tide of information that's almost too much for people to take. It has resulted in a kind of sickness in people, exhaustion or resignation. So, ultimately Multiversity is about that, because I like to write stories about stuff that I'm seeing in the world around me, or the stuff I'm feeling. It's about, are you sure you should be letting all this stuff into your head? How do you honestly feel about all the porn and all the things you see, all the beheadings? What's it doing in there?
The Gentry kind of represent all those things that we just accept. To me, the result I'm actually seeing is a kind of soul weariness, a cynicism, a sickness that permeates culture. I think we're all fed up with ourselves and we're just waiting to be destroyed by the other."
----------------------
"At the same time, I'm trying to talk about real things. That's where the symbolic content comes in, where the Gentry represent all these bad influences, but really each one of the Gentry is kind of a villain archetype taken to the limit. Intellectron is the mastermind taken to the limit. Dame Merciless is the femme fatale taken to the demonic limit. Demogorgunn is the zombie horde taken to the limit, and so on through the rest of them. Lord Broken is the madhouse, Arkham Asylum taken it to the limit. Each of them represents a fairly understandable villain type once you think about it.
So the symbolism becomes, well what do they represent in the real world? For me, they represent forces of nihilism and anti-human hatred, ignorance and greed and stupidity that I see every day. Those aspects of the story, how do you deal with those? How do you communicate those? What happens when there are too many of them in your head and you're starting to feel sick with it? That's the symbolic element in the comic, but at the same time I still have to show what happens with Red Racer's affair with Flashlight [laughs]. I still have to show what happens to President Superman at the end and make sure everyone gets returned to their homes and all the crises are brought to an end satisfactorily."
----------------------
"The Gentry was one of those names and it just stuck with me when I was thinking about beings from beyond, and we used to call them The Gentry. Then I thought of them as being bad things from beyond. From that, they started to grow, and then as you said, this idea of gentrification. When I'm talking to you about the kind of ideas we let into our heads, and taken as a thesis of, what if we let in so many shitty, shoddy ideas that we have completely ruined the neighborhood in there? We've dismantled, we've wrecked our inner houses and we've destroyed our inner palaces, and we've placed crackhouses in there, imaginatively.
I don't necessarily believe that this is all true. I thought it would make an interesting idea for a story, so the Gentry then are these bad ideas that come in you when you've messed up your head [laughs], so they come in and start rebuilding because you've now made it comfortable for them to recreate and build in their own image. So that, again, that's one of the big things it's about, this notion of gentrification coming into places and places that have been seemingly broken down and left to ruin and then rebuilding for them the benefit of your own kind."
They are, in essence, 'bad ideas' taken to the limit... Ideas/imagination gone awry, if you will.
(Part 2/2)
When The Gentry are first encountered, Thunderer notes that they are "the Pitless Ones from BEHIND THE INVISIBLE RAINBOW. Opposite of everything natural.":
Imo, the "invisible rainbow" is describing the ultradimensional circumference which spans all of creation, as depicted in Morrison's Map(posted above)--the final 'barrier' between the Monitor Sphere and the unknowable Source/Overvoid. This suggests that The Gentry hail from beyond the DC continuum...And given that they are pure thought-forms -imagination/ideas gone awry- this suggests they are 5th dimensional beings. Their mastery of the "Anti-Death Equation"(which they used on Nix Uotan) also suggests an origin from beyond the Source/Overvoid, as 'equations' of this magnitude are typically linked directly to The Source.
The Gentry's higher-dimensional status is further solidified by the meta 'attack' they used against Nix:
Their alteration of the comic book itself, and folding down of the universe on top of Nix, appears to be WELL beyond his comprehension. This suggests it's a technique that is outside/beyond Monitor knowledge-base... A 5th dimensional attack.
And lastly we have Intellectron explicitly being referred to as a 5-D being:
____________________________________________
All of that being said, I think it's clear that Morrison intended The Gentry to be 5th dimensional beings. But just for a little more icing on the cake, I'll post Mxy's recent metatextual dialogue again:
http://i.imgur.com/eR9BixR.jpg
"I don't need a body. I've lived on, and will live on, in heads. The heads of the authors who write me. I have no vocal cords, and yet right now, you're hearing my voice. I'm living in your head right now [...] Ideas are agency. We are Gods. You are just puppets. As long as there's one of you, there'll be a hundred of us."
That sounds shockingly similar to Intellectron's dialogue here:
mmm
____________________________________________
As for The Empty Hand(because he is the leader of The Gentry), I think it's obvious at this point that he is a 'gentrified' Ultra Comics... And Ultra Comics is metatextual... Ultra Comics is us--the readers:
This notion is further solidified by the fact that their symbols are the exact same:
So yeah, I believe The Empty Hand IS Ultra Comics. IOW, we are the empty hand. We are the Oblivion Machine. The Gentry is the process through which we break down stories into memories, thoughts, ideas, messages, feelings and all the like -- re-shaping them into something different. It is a destructive process, but it's also one through which heroes gain powers. The door has one side, and opens both ways.
/thoughts
F*CK
👆
This is my struggle with Morrison. His ideas have such depth and beauty to them, but they need a treatise from a superfan to decipher. Final Crisis and the Batman stuff leading up to it was another example. Intelligent, thoughtful readers had no clue what was going on, and if you missed the interview with his big explanation, you just thought it was high-minded pablum.
Originally posted by DigiNo kidding.
F*CK👆
This is my struggle with Morrison. His ideas have such depth and beauty to them, but they need a treatise from a superfan to decipher. Final Crisis and the Batman stuff leading up to it was another example. Intelligent, thoughtful readers had no clue what was going on, and if you missed the interview with his big explanation, you just thought it was high-minded pablum.
Not only do you have to read this stuff multiple times to fully grasp it(and even then, you're still scratching your head at some parts lol), but Morrison's interview on exactly what The Gentry are is what *finally* made it all click for me. 👆
Originally posted by blair85Could still be one of the Unknown Worlds on his Map... Or maybe Morrison just isn't a fan of DKR, and wanted it stricken from his continuum. 😛
This threat is gold. Thanks.But. Is there no DKR universe anymore? It used to be Earth-31, I think. But 31 is now some "post apocalyptic drowned world."
Originally posted by Don DraperThe Overvoid, or Primal Monitor(whichever title you prefer) literally represents the blank white page onto which comic books are printed--the pages that we as readers flip through while reading a comic, irl. Ironically, Morrison best described this concept back in the late 80s, during his run on Animal Man...
yeah, excellent stuff galan! Really helped me decipher multiversity!question though: what exactly is the overvoid?
Buddy sees the white light--the blankness beyond the comic book panels that Morrison has now defined as the 'Overvoid':
When Buddy asks what the light is, the Yellow Aliens respond with the following:
"That light represents the middle ground between our reality and the higher world out of which we are unfolded."
After entering the white light/Overvoid, Buddy and Ultraman can see us -the readers- staring back down at them:
The characters soon realize they are merely fictional tools in a story meant to entertain... And that we -the readers- simply watch the drama unfold:
And after Buddy enters the white light/Overvoid, he is able to step into the white blankness between comic book panels:
http://i.imgur.com/B4WtNN5.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/uMv8xie.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/gE7lQTk.jpg
(This further tells us that the Overvoid is the blank canvas onto white comics are illustrated.)
____________________________________________
It's also worth pointing out that Morrison was already using the "Earth-Prime = the real world" concept back then as well. After all, finding a huge stash of comic books from Earth-Prime is what made Psycho Pirate(and a few others) realize they are just fictional characters in a fictional medium. Said comics also helped Psycho Pirate begin recreating the pre-crisis multiverse:
http://i.imgur.com/B4WtNN5.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/dhzJd9H.jpg
As I mentioned above: the 52 earths, Apokolips/New Genesis, Limbo, the Monitor realm of Nil, etc. etc. -- all of these comprise the multiverse in its totality.
The 5th dimension resides outside the multiverse:
IOW, it resides beyond the outermost boundary of Morrison's Map -- possibly beyond even the Overvoid.
Couple that with the info I posted above, and I believe the 5th dimension is a purely metatextual realm -- it is literally the imagination of the readers and characters made manifest. That is why it cannot be 'mapped' on a 2D plane, like the other realms/dimensions on the Map could be. It transcends all of that.
Again, this is just my opinion. 🙂
Barry Allen references Hypertime:
http://i.imgur.com/1lteztc.jpg
-Flash #22 (2017)
Originally posted by Galan007
Barry Allen references Hypertime:
http://i.imgur.com/1lteztc.jpg
-Flash #22 (2017)
droolio
Originally posted by Galan007
Barry Allen references Hypertime:
http://i.imgur.com/1lteztc.jpg
-Flash #22 (2017)
Zoom is a creepy motherf*cker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGDoIFvVAwM
this guy did a pretty good depicion of dc multiverse imo
