New Map of the Multiverse by Grant Morrison

[Clairaudient Freedom Soldier]

More info ...

[Deniz Camp]

I would kiss you on the mouth, were you not just pixelated light.

Many thanks.

[BohemiaDrinker]

Clairaudient Freedom Soldier, thank you VERY MUCH!

[ReverseReverseFlash]

This should be required reading. Good summation. The only thing I would question is when Bruce Wayne went back in time. It couldn't have been only a year ago in the New 52 timeline. It's 3 years ago per Batman and ... #19 and Robin Rises #1 (2011 in the New 52 timeline). But all in all unimportant - you've hit the high points

Where are you getting your timestamps from? I want to see it.

Anyhow, Bruce's trip through time happened immediately after Damian's appearance, which was a year ago to his death. So Bruce died about 15 months ago in muddy comic time. Bruce referred to Damian as both 11 and 10 years old, which is him theorizing about the maturity of a 5 year old super baby. Bruce saying he's 11 in Batman Inc is his noting that Damian was 10 when he arrived on his birthday about a year ago. He's 11-ish, basically.

The current Batman timeline is all based on Morrison's work as prologue. It is centered around Damian's arrival, Batman and Son, RIP, Death of Bruce, etc. It draws on that as being about a year ago. Even Snyder had Joker's face being removed 'about a year ago' in Death of the Family, which would line up with the Joker's disappearance immediately after he defeated Dr. Hurt(Detective #1 being immediately after, with the Joker being caught and skinned).

It's muddy comic time, but it's not three years ago. Nightfall and the Death of Superman are about three years.

In the greater sense, I've realized Morrison's point of view of the multiverse and Batman's death. It didn't happen in the New 52 timeline. It happened in the multiversal timeline. Crisis to Crisis.

New 52 Batman never embarked on the events of Final Crisis. Not as we read it. Final Crisis belonged to the previous timeline. The problem is that Batman's attack on Darkseid and the role he played in Final Crisis is part of the multiverse's timeline. That cannot be changed or removed, which means Batman will remain married to his role in Final Crisis, whether he is post-Flashpoint or not. Just like Barry Allen in COIE.

So the best you can imagine is that our New 52 Batman found himself basically pulled backwards through time, through the wall of Flashpoint, and he engaged in the events of Final Crisis. His escape through time led him back into the New 52 universe, where he would struggle to understand what happened to him. He refers to it as being alone in the dark in Batman INC #0. That is all that's left of the Final Crisis event in Bruce's vanishing perception. Darkness, a void. A hole in things/the New 52 reality where his role in Final Crisis used to be.

The great hole in things used to be Darkeid's fall, which left a hole in his place. Now Darkseid lives, so the hole in things for Batman is the void left by the removal of Final Crisis in the New 52 orientation.

To everyone else's perception, Bruce simply vanished immediately after RIP, which is somewhat satisfying on a metatexual level. The irony is that Bruce emerging from the Omega Sanction in the New 52 reality could be used as a device to explain why his history crept through with him. The time-lost element serving as a sort of wormhole connecting the timelines on each side of Flashpoint. Bruce crawled into the timestream in the old DCU and when he crawled out, he was in the New 52 reality, his historical baggage in tow. It's similar to themes in Donnie Darko.

Otherwise, the universe might have rebooted him with Superman.

This is getting complicated! In that point of view, Bruce's actions in Final Crisis actually PRESERVED him to a degree that he could actually survive the entire multiverse reshaping itself in Flashpoint. Bruce can't be free of his history due to his involvement in Final Crisis and it's role in the multiverse's history. WHEW.

Oddly, one of the main damage control elements of repairing or rationalizing Bruce's new timeline is to have the Chaos Shard quickly age a Damian that was naturally 10 years old before Flashpoint, so that the universe can permit him to exist in a world where Batman has only existed for half a decade. It's ironic that the existence of the Chaos Shard is linked directly to the continued existence of the Dark Gods that would otherwise be dead thanks to Final Crisis and Bruce's role in destroying Darkseid. It's all connected.

[Flash Gordon]

Ugh this is going to be so amazing.

[Clairaudient Freedom Soldier]

Before I go to bed, enjoy, compeers ...

[resipsaloquitur]

I'm curious where all the Lantern energies come from. The Source wall, since it's a big rainbow?

I guess I'm curious how much Geoff Johns collaborated with Morrison on all this.

[thebatlab]

In the greater sense, I've realized Morrison's point of view of the multiverse and Batman's death. It didn't happen in the New 52 timeline. It happened in the multiversal timeline. Crisis to Crisis.

New 52 Batman never embarked on the events of Final Crisis. Not as we read it. Final Crisis belonged to the previous timeline. The problem is that Batman's attack on Darkseid and the role he played in Final Crisis is part of the multiverse's timeline. That cannot be changed or removed, which means Batman will remain married to his role in Final Crisis, whether he is post-Flashpoint or not. Just like Barry Allen in COIE.

So the best you can imagine is that our New 52 Batman found himself basically pulled backwards through time, through the wall of Flashpoint, and he engaged in the events of Final Crisis. His escape through time led him back into the New 52 universe, where he would struggle to understand what happened to him. He refers to it as being alone in the dark in Batman INC #0. That is all that's left of the Final Crisis event in Bruce's vanishing perception. Darkness, a void. A hole in things/the New 52 reality where his role in Final Crisis used to be.

The great hole in things used to be Darkeid's fall, which left a hole in his place. Now Darkseid lives, so the hole in things for Batman is the void left by the removal of Final Crisis in the New 52 orientation.

To everyone else's perception, Bruce simply vanished immediately after RIP, which is somewhat satisfying on a metatexual level. The irony is that Bruce emerging from the Omega Sanction in the New 52 reality could be used as a device to explain why his history crept through with him. The time-lost element serving as a sort of wormhole connecting the timelines on each side of Flashpoint. Bruce crawled into the timestream in the old DCU and when he crawled out, he was in the New 52 reality, his historical baggage in tow. It's similar to themes in Donnie Darko.

Otherwise, the universe might have rebooted him with Superman.

This is getting complicated! In that point of view, Bruce's actions in Final Crisis actually PRESERVED him to a degree that he could actually survive the entire multiverse reshaping itself in Flashpoint. Bruce can't be free of his history due to his involvement in Final Crisis and it's role in the multiverse's history. WHEW.

Oddly, one of the main damage control elements of repairing or rationalizing Bruce's new timeline is to have the Chaos Shard quickly age a Damian that was naturally 10 years old before Flashpoint, so that the universe can permit him to exist in a world where Batman has only existed for half a decade. It's ironic that the existence of the Chaos Shard is linked directly to the continued existence of the Dark Gods that would otherwise be dead thanks to Final Crisis and Bruce's role in destroying Darkseid. It's all connected.

Thank you for this!

[resipsaloquitur]

I'm confused. Are we saying that Batman skipped from Final Crisis to the New52? Because I remember The Return of Bruce Wayne happening between Blackest Night and Flashpoint. Specifically, I remember Batman reappearing around issue #13 of Brightest Day, where he talked to Deadman about how he survived Darkseid's attack. This was midway through the series and several months before Flashpoint. Or am I misreading things?

[Icefan]

Before I go to bed, enjoy, compeers ...

Cosmic tampons?

[Tupiaz]

Since Morrison have said that one of the earths would be nod to Watchmen could one of the unknown planets then be Watchmen. As I understand it 7 of the earths will remain unknown. It seems like the closes thing you could do to bring Watchmen into the DC universe without doing so.

[Thor-Ul]

Could Superdoom might come from earth-45? Could the Love Syndicate of Dreamworld be living in earth-47?

[Dispenser Of Truth]

If anyone can get a pic of Nightmare, Hell and Apokolips, I can complete the transcript over here, and copy and paste the completed version over here. CFS, got one more in you?

[ReverseReverseFlash]

I'm confused. Are we saying that Batman skipped from Final Crisis to the New52? Because I remember The Return of Bruce Wayne happening between Blackest Night and Flashpoint. Specifically, I remember Batman reappearing around issue #13 of Brightest Day, where he talked to Deadman about how he survived Darkseid's attack. This was midway through the series and several months before Flashpoint. Or am I misreading things?

You're referencing the 'character timeline', as I described in the above posts. Those story events are in the New 52, but they are heavily modified. Hal went through a Blackest Night scenario that isn't the story we read exactly, but would still be very close. The actors change, but the script is mostly the same.

Crisis events are where it gets messy. They depict the characters WITHIN the story influencing the structure of the greater universe they inhabit. They are literally modifying their own existence, while trying to survive in a continuing timeline.

The missing factor is Final Crisis. It is not included in the post-Flashpoint DCU. It belongs to the old DCU.

Here's the best way I can explain it. The multiverse has it's own timeline, where the character timelines are 'ideas' contained in it. The events of Final Crisis are a part of that multiverse's timeline, even if they are now removed from the character timelines. The anomoly is that a Batman took part in Final Crisis, which means he is now recorded in the timeline of the book of the multiverse. The highest story of stories. That means that as the multiverse' timeline plays out, there's always a Batman in Final Crisis that shoots Darkseid and sees him to his immediate death in that story.

That Batman was the Batman of Earth Zero, our Batman. Now, his timeline has changed, but his role in Final Crisis does not. Even if his immediate timeline can't rationalize what happened, the multiverse demands his intervention, as Final Crisis absolute history in the higher sense.

It's confusing until you get a grasp of the two timelines running in the DCU.

Consider it this way. Huck Finn is written by Mark Twain. Huck has his own stories and history and life. The book in which Huck Finn's stories are printed also has it's own story, where it is paper and used to be a tree that evolved on a beautiful planet called Earth over a billion years. If something were to allow Huck to interact with the trees in which his own book were printed, our living human history would forever record that event, if the Huck in the story never mentions having done it.

That's the relationship between Batman and the multiverse.

Batman has two timelines in this situation.

Timeline 1: The post-Crisis DCU. Batman is kidnapped in Final Crisis, helps kill Darkseid, and is shot back in time through the Omega Sanction. Batman emerges from time and creates Batman Incorporated.
Timeline 2: The post-Flashpoint DCU. Batman 'dies' in a mysterious event and eventually emerges from the timestream and founds a slightly different Batman Incorporated.

Despite the differences in these events, they still inhabit a multiverse that underwent the events in Final Crisis. Earth Zero Batman always shoots Darkseid and goes back in time.

So Both Batmans exist in a reality where their trip through time always only contained historical points that belong to their respective timelines. The difference is that New 52 Bruce has to be yanked from his 'logical' timeline and thrown into the role of the previous Batman, who was native to the timeline events that lead to Final Crisis.

So Final Crisis, in the multiversal sense, it's a convergence between Timeline 1 and Timeline 2 at a point that ends in Final Crisis, then the timelines disassociate again. Since the New 52 edited out Final Crisis, Bruce's role is an anomaly. Bruce finds himself exiting the New 52 timeline and existing in the multiverse timeline that contains Final Crisis, only long enough to play out his role. His trip through time and emergence back into the present day is the downward slope that divides and returns the two Bruces to their separate histories. Think of each Bruce falling back down two opposite sides of a pyramid, never seeing each other. At the top of the Pyramid is his encounter with Darkseid in Final Crisis.

New 52 Bruce emerges into the New 52 reality, while Earth Zero Bruce returns to his own timeline, which will only exist for a short period before Barry causes the Flashpoint Paradox.

It's a very similar scenario for Barry Allen in Flashpoint. The old DCU Barry going into Flashpoint has his own timeline and history, but he shares an identical event in Flashpoint as New 52 Barry, who also raced into the events of Flashpoint in the New 52 timeline, while trying to save his mother. They converged into a single Flash in the Flashpoint reality, much like the Bruces will always do in Final Crisis. Once that paradox was resolved, the Barry's separated, with new 52 Barry being the primary story we follow. Same as new Bruce, same as every character in the New 52.

This is how ALL back-story exists in the New 52. New 52 Barry has his own life and origin and stories that lead up to him jumping into the Flashpoint paradox. He knows he went in, he knows why, and he knows he escaped and brought that note to Bruce Wayne from his dead father.

Every New 52 character has history in the same logic. It is heavily modified, retold, and also preserved. Flashpoint affected BOTH realities, old DCU and New 52 DCU. It changed the old DCU, but the New 52 DCU did not change. For everyone involved, it always existed as ONLY the New 52. Think of Marty McFly returning to 1985 in Back to the Future, seeing his wealthy and successful family, but this Marty is the one that grew up with a poorer family in the previous version of 1985. Somewhere in the echos of time, there's a Marty that was born in his 'better' 1985 and only ever knew that version.

That's exactly like Bruce's involvement in Final Crisis. It changed old Bruce's timeline, but not New 52 Bruce. To Bruce, it was like a near-death or death experience, comparable to his time spent in the isolation experiments and the Thogal rituals. Morrison was driving home those points even before Flashpoint modified the backstory. Bruce described his trip through time like standing in a cave and seeing history encircle him, like fluttering bats.

That's still mostly the case. A human can only perceive so much when he's being meddled by a God.

Since Morrison have said that one of the earths would be nod to Watchmen could one of the unknown planets then be Watchmen. As I understand it 7 of the earths will remain unknown. It seems like the closes thing you could do to bring Watchmen into the DC universe without doing so.

Modifying the close history of one earth will not affect the other. For instance, Red Son Superman going back in time and changing his history won't somehow make the soviets win the Cold War on Earth Zero. Earth Zero can only influence the other worlds, not the other way around unless there is a physical intervention by characters hopping universes.

So with that in mind, each world in the New 52 has its own tangents and hypertimes. You have 52 primary earths and INFINITE alternate timelines that exist for each of the 52 earths. This means that Watchmen or Pax Americana are both tangent ideas of Earth-4, with Pax currently being the primary story and Watchman playing secondary as an alternate timeline of Earth 4.

[Clairaudient Freedom Soldier]

If anyone can get a pic of Nightmare, Hell and Apokolips, I can complete the transcript over here, and copy and paste the completed version over here. CFS, got one more in you?

Here you go, friend! Thanks for putting the material together!