DC Cosmogony - A Brief Presentation

[Korath]

2018 has seen DC vastly expand on its Cosmogony, that is the collection of Divine and semi-devine entities populating its Universe (thinks Galactus, the Living Tribunal and the likes at Marvel), and I thought it would be useful to have a brief recap of where we stand. This post is due to be amended both in discussion with anyone interested and changes made by DC.

For the purpose of this thread, I've devided the entities between what I call the Primordial Forces (I), the Entities (II) and the Inheritors (III). Note that Dr. Manhattan won't be touched upon for now, since I can't quite figure yet his place in all of this.

Note that all of this are speculations from my part, from what I understood while reading the DC stuff related to those matters, hence why all of this is prone to change when contributors will help me there.

I : The Primordial Forces
They are the easiest to touch upon, because they are only five, and seems to share the same duties overall : creation and destruction, in pairs, save one who is lost.

a) The Twins
They are The Monitor (creator of the Material Universe - presumably Prime Earth/Earth 0) and The Anti-Monitor (destructor of the Material Universe, presumably creator of the Anti-Matter Universe). Note that those beings are probably the Monitor and Anti-Monitor of Crisis on Infinite Earth not Mobius' Anti-Monitor from what was hinted at in Metal, and thus actual Primodial Forces representing the balance of the normal Multiverse. Their sphere seems to mostly be the reality of the Multiverse, not the more mystical aspects of it.

b)The Triple Goddess and the Otherkind
Those two were Hecate and the Upsidedown-Man. Both were spawned at the creation of the Universe, and once more they are opposite force. At first Hecate was pure magic, the creator of the Sphere of the Gods but the actions of her own children turned her bitter and evil; to the contrary, the Upsidedown-Man was always the incarnation of evil, twisted magic, the corruptive magic which taints and destroy. Note that Hecate erected a barrier at the Dawn of Creation to separe herself from the Upsidedown-Man and its Otherkind, which means that she may have created both the Sphere of the Gods but also the separation between the Orrery of Worlds and the Dark Multiverse.

c)The Forger
This one was alone, which makes me suspect that he was supposed to be tied to both the Creation and Destruction aspects usually embodied in "siblings" among the other Primordial Forces. Creation, because in his World Forge, he hammered countless new realities and had to recycle; Destruction because he had to "recycle" the unstable realities. He was probably supposed to be the balancing entity between the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor, Hecate and the Otherkind, and between the Twins and the "Siblings of Magic" to ensure the birth of stable Universes, where neither "science" nor "magic" was so badly unbalanced that they couldn't endure. However, he failed at his task and was destroyed when he chose to create an unbalanced entity to deal with his Destruction aspect, his Dragon, Barbatos (more on him below).

II : The Entities
a)Mandrakk
For a start, there was two Mandrakk, but only one now remains (Dax Novu, the first Mandrakk). Those beings are the corrupt form of the second generation of the Monitors (see Inheritors, below). The Mandrakk were believed destroyed, but Dax Novu was in fact banished to the Dark Multiverse or a place linked to it, before freeing himself recently. Mandrakk is a parasitic entity who drains the very essence of the Multiverse to grow stronger.

b)Barbatos
Barbatos, or the Dragon, is a creation of the Forger, tasked originally with the destruction of the unstable worlds so his master could use their essences to try and craft better suited universes. The Dragon ended killing his master to usurp him and let the World Forge to grow cold, leading the worlds of the now Dark Multiverse to rot forevermore instead of being swiftly destroyed. He is also the Father of the Bat, because of the events of Final Crisis, when he saw Batman hurled through time back tens of thousands of years ago. He thus intervened to make sure that Batman happened and survived until he could be summoned. The Dragon is now chained at the very bottom of the Dark Multiverse.

c)The Omega Titans
Those four entities are probably the strangest on this list. They come from beyond the Source Wall and are thus existence from outside the Multiverse and the Dark Multiverse. They embody four "drive" found in every civilization of the Multiverse : Mystery, Wonder, Wisdom and Entropy. However, they are not benevolent, or even keeper of those drives, instead devouring civilized worlds accordingly to its prominent drive (Colu was devoured by the Titans of Wisdom and the Titan of Entropy nearly did the same to Earth. So far, only Wisdom, Wonder and Mystery remains, having been lured into devouring their Brother, but the recreation or rebirth of the Titan of Entropy has been hinted as necessary to seal the breach in the Source Wall.

III : The Inheritors
a)The Monitors
The Monitors were supposed to be the Guardians of the Multiverse, each one of them tasked with protecting one of the 52 Universes created after the Infinite Crisis. However, they discovered that they had an adverse effect on the vitality of the Multiverse (giving rise to the two Mandrakk), being vampiric entities. They were all destroyed during the Final Crisis, with Nix Uotan, one of the Monitors who fought Mandrakk, being reborn on Earth-0 as a human teenager, with his powers and memory largely intact. The disappearance of the Monitors gave rise to their successors.

b)The Fuginauts
The Fuginauts are a race of cosmic beings tasked with preserving the boundaries between the Universes, and especially between the normal and Dark Multiverse. They see themselves as successors of the Monitors, but do not seem to posses their powers or averse effect on the Multiverse. Their missions are also limited to preventing being from other Universes to cross over for fear of corrupting the colonized Universe. Some exceptions of this rule have appeared, like the hero Sideways and the Unseen, refugees from the Dark Multiverse. One of them stood guard over the remains of the World of Nil, home of the Monitors, and they seem to have a leader. The Fuginauts are probably at war with the Home Office, a race of malevolent beings from the Dark Multiverse (possibly linked to the Otherkind) who try to slowly turn the main Earth into a plane of existence more attuned to their nature.

c)The Oans
The Oans are beings natives from each universe. In the Main universe, they are divided between the Guardians and the Controllers. Not many of them remains, but they are extremely powerful beings, the leader of the Green Lantern Corps and the Dark/Blackstars respectively. The Guardians wish to police the younger races of the Universe, while the Controllers want to rule over them. They both possess great knowledge about their Universe and keep many of its deadliest secrets. The Oans are deeply linked to the Colored Beasts, embodiment of the Emotional Spectrum, but also with Nekron, the incarnation of the Black Light, Death in the Emotional Spectrum. The Oans are the weakest of the Cosmic entities comprising the DC Cosmogony, but they remains formidable foes.

d)The Adjudicator
He was a member of an unspecified alien race (possibly Oan) who had succumbed to madness. Believing himself to be the judge of worlds, he visited planets and destroyed them when the civilizations they had spanned displeased him. He possessed cosmic awareness of the first Multiverse (before the Crisis on Infinite Earth) and the ability to create psychic manifestations taking whatever form he wished. He was defeated by Wonder Woman and ten other heroines from four separate Earth and his overseers then took him into custody, his fate remaining unknown ever since.

[Robotman]

Thanks for making this thread. As you said, DC has really expanded its cosmic otherworldly beings in the past few years.

[Korath]

The first draft of this brief recap is completed ! Please, let me know what you would to see revised, added, better explained, etc.

[daBronzeBomma]

Let's talk about the Biggest of the Big Guns who are missing here:

Where is The Presence and Lucifer and Michael?

Where is The Source?

Above them, where is Monitor-Mind the Overvoid (the DC equivalent to Marvel's pre-retcon Beyonder)?

And above all of them,

Where is The Writer (the DC equivalent to Marvel's The One Above All)?

[Korath]

Of all those you listed, I feel that only the Monitor-Mind may make a return in the upcoming cosmic events that DC is clearly hinting at.

Mainly because the Vertigo books feels really separated from the main-line DCU so I can't see Lucifer, Michael or even The Presence making an appearance (being too linked to Christianity to work in the larger Cosmic Cosmogony of DC as it stands currently).

I don't know who the Source is, never heard of it, and the same goes for the Writer (even if this one is probably too one the nose to be used without careful planning).

I would have liked to add The Gentry and the Empty hand, the Gods (Old, "Old" and New), Manhattan and Ur-Brainiac, but there remains too much mysteries around them to make them fit at first try, I think.

[Bruce Wayne]

c)The Oans
The Oans are beings natives from each universe. In the Main universe, they are divided between the Guardians and the Controllers. N

You are forgetting the Zamarons that consist of the females of their species (unless Venditti has retconned this).

[golgi]

You also forgot to add:

Vothoom (Hinted to be the creator of the Multiverse))
Krona
Parayla (The void of the Multiverse)
Nekron
etc...

[golgi]

Can't wait until they reveal Perpetua, the wielder of the 7 forces. She should be overpowered as hell.

[WonderScott]

Before there were Monitors and the Anti-Monitor, there was the Adjudicator - a Wonder foe.

The concepts ushered in by Diana, that then get made into characters in other books/events, get so little respect, that I'd like to see him/it in its place as a powerful participant in the DCU cosmogony.

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Adjudicator_(Earth-One)

[Korath]

I've added a bit about the Adjudictator.

Concerning the bits of Lantern lore, I'm really, really, not knowledgeable in there, so help from Lantern fans would be much appreciated !

[Robotman]

Hecate is now said to be one of the most powerful beings in the DCU. her backstory in The Witching Hour shows that she’s primordial magic taken human form. Predating every pantheon. I guess that means the Upside-down Man is just as powerful.

[Korath]

Hecate is now said to be one of the most powerful beings in the DCU. her backstory in The Witching Hour shows that she’s primordial magic taken human form. Predating every pantheon. I guess that means the Upside-down Man is just as powerful.

Which makes me wonder : if Hecate hadn't cast out the Upside-down Man, would there be a Dark Multiverse and an Orrery of Worlds ? I put the both of them in the Primordial Forces, but I wonder if they may not be something even above it.

[golgi]

Which makes me wonder : if Hecate hadn't cast out the Upside-down Man, would there be a Dark Multiverse and an Orrery of Worlds ? I put the both of them in the Primordial Forces, but I wonder if they may not be something even above it.

Another question: Is the Upside Down Man apart of the Other Kind? Is the Other Kind just as powerful as the Upside Down Man? Tynion said that the Upside Down Man is only the ringleader. What does that mean? Here is the quote:

So we wanted to put the team up against something that is so unsettling -- the Upside Down Man talks very politely while he just walks in -- it was that image that I just had in my head. Imagine being in a room and just of someone starts walking towards you on the ceiling, smiling with spiders dripping from him. And he's just one of them. He's only the ringleader.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I've added a bit about the Adjudictator.

Concerning the bits of Lantern lore, I'm really, really, not knowledgeable in there, so help from Lantern fans would be much appreciated !

It's tricky, because there's been a lot of contradictions about them over the years, but it seems with Morrison, the Oans are back to being at the top of the food chain in terms of the cosmic movers and shakers. There are primordial beings that existed before them like the Voice, the Endless, the Heavenly Host, and the Old Gods that would eventually spawn the Fourth World, but they have pretty much been there from the start of the DCU.

The Guardians were the first sentient life in the universe, born on the planet Maltus. From there, they were the first mortals to achieve immortality through their own science and technology. Their greatest scientist, Krona, was the one responsible for the creation of the Multiverse when he attempted to witness the origin of the universe with his time viewer, which also gave birth to The Monitor on Oa's moon, and created the Anti-Matter Universe, where The Anti-Monitor was born on Qward's moon. As a result of this, the Maltusian immortals relocated to Oa, at the center of the Multiverse, and rechristened themselves the Guardians of the Universe.

The details of this have changed with each reboot and revision of history, but Krona's experiment remains a pivitol event in cosmic history. Post-Crisis, it remained the birth of the Anti-Mantter Universe, along with The Monitor and Anti-Monitor. However, the mysterious hand at the Dawn of Time was revealed to be an illusion created by the ancient Maltusians in order to make it appear that they were the progenitors of the universe and serve as a barrier against any enemy attempting to strike at them in their infancy. Krona's attempt to pierce the barrier had resulted in millions of years of time being lost, so that the universe was born old and would no have enough energy to create the next Big Bang when the cosmos expanded and contracted back into itself.

Once the Multiverse returned, the details changed again. The ancient Multusians' attempts to obscure the past was done to protect the Earth, which was the true birthplace of sentient life in the universe. Krona's experiment had now unleashed Volthoom. Volthoom was from a doomed future alternate Earth. He had created a Lantern to traverse the Multiverse, but had become lost in time and space for millennia. When he was freed by Krona, he instructed the ancient Maltusians on how to use the power of the Emotional Spectrum. However, he went insane when the Maltusians locked all their emotions inside Volthoom's Lantern, which he had grafted into his chest. The Maltusians imprisoned Volthoom deep within Oa, where they rechristened themselves the Guardians of the Universe.

I'm not quite sure how the most recent revisions of The Monitor and Anti-Monitor plays into all this. Morrison introduced the Over-Monitor in Final Crisis, then Johns revealed the Mobius of the Fourth World had become the Anti-Monitor when he unlocked the Anti-Life Equation. How this jibes with their original births as a result of Krona's disastrous experiment, I don't know.