The following “History of the DC Universe: Overvoid to Dark Crisis” expands upon details from within Collin Colsher’s Batman Chronology Project while focusing on other things—namely, the web of manipulations from The Great Darkness, The Source, Perpetua, and Barbatos. Notably, a big chunk of the following History comes from revelations revealed in Jim Starlin’s Death of the New Gods, which some consider to be non-canon.

In the Beginning

In the beginning, all that existed was the empty nothingness of the Overvoid, aka Overmonitor, an omnipotent living void of endless size. Although nothing yet existed in the various dimensions of the omniverse, the Overvoid acted as a potential incubator for future life. Within the Overvoid was first born The Great Darkness, aka Hand of the Great Darkness. Then the second Great Hand, The Presence/Hand of the Light, was born, thanks to the collective dreams of humanity (Lucifer), altering reality from the future, atemporarly (Sandman). The Light was imperceptible in comparison to the Great Darkness. However, the Light expanded to become everything. In protest, the Great Darkness cried out, creating a flaw in the immaculate perfection of the Light, beginning the birth of the Omniverse (Justice League Incarnate).

As “the Voice,” the Light created the word and the Omniverse. His first living creation was the First of the Fallen, aka Satan, created to be his companion and the embodiment of his consciousness. His next creations and first great ideas were the Demiurgic Archangels (Lucifer) and the Djinn (Adam Glass’ Teen Titans). He married a being of unknown provenance called the Mother Entity, source of the Mother Boxes (Bug: The Adventurers of Forager).

He then created the race of The Hands, which He sent into the Great Void, where He tasked them with creating new multiversal systems using the Seven Forces of the Universe (These 7 are subdivided into Anti-Crisis and Direct-Crisis Forces. Doctor Manhattan is composed of the Anti-Crisis ones, also called Connective Energy. Some of these 7 forces are the Flash’s Speed Force, the Emotional Spectrum of the Lantern Corps, which manifest in Emotional Entities such as Nekron, for death, and the Life Entity for life; the Sphere of the Gods, which creates magic, Angels, Demons, gods and New Gods, the Dimensional Superstructure, which creates the Monitors, the Life Force which created Aquaman, the Collective Unconscious and Faithfulness.) After the creation of their Multiverse, each member of The Hands was to die and allow their energies to return to the Source of All Things. The true goal of each Multiverse was the achievement of perfect harmony between each being of the infinite realities that make up its Multiverse. The Presence also created the Chronicler, an observer of the Omniverse who records the histories of the dying Multiverses in his “Codex Omniversa”. For countless eons, he saw trillions of dying Multiverses, recording their entire history. However, one of The Hands, Perpetua, refused to die and wanted to create an immortal, predatory and vicious multiverse designed for its inhabitants to become Apex Predators to rebel against the other Hands; for this, she combined humans with Martians to create metahumans. Her multiverse was locked in an endless cycle of crisis and rebirth. (Tynion) However, her children Monitor, Anti-Monitor and World Forger (Barbatos’ father) betrayed her and called in the Judges of the Presence, the Cosmic Raptors, who created the Source Wall from the Apex Predators to imprison Perpetua; the Predators became known as Promethean Giants. The Source Wall became the new boundary between the Multiverse and the Greater Omniverse, rendering the Antimatter Universe obsolete and causing a rift between the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor. The flawed and predatory Multiverse had to be rebooted, but what emerged in its place was unique: the Chronicler observed that it was unlike all other multiverses, and that its residents were “eternal.” The Chronicler did not know that this was because Earth Prime is not a universe but a metaverse that causes the multiverse to change in reaction to changes within it (Doomsday Clock).

In the new multiverse, many things happened, but first and foremost we must emphasize that one of the beings that were born along with the multiverse was the woman called Pandora, an incarnation of the Seven Sins of Humanity, who began a cycle that always ends with one of her Sins victorious and causing the collapse and reboot of the multiverse (Trinity of Sin: Pandora).

Another being that caused countless reboots was Imperiex, an incarnation of entropy contained in humanoid armor. Since the dawn of time, he repeatedly destroyed the universe to create a new one from the ashes of the old one (Our Worlds At War).

Multiverse-2

After countless reboots, Krona went back in time to observe the moment when the multiverse was reborn. His actions caused the multiverse to fragment into an infinite number of universes (implying it was a finite multiverse before? See Dark Crisis’ implications that an universe can be “even more infinite”). The Anti-Monitor was born like in every cycle and Perpetua began to poison his mind by whispering to him in order to free herself from the Source Wall. Mobius, the Anti Monitor, built the Chair of Mobius to learn the secrets of creation. When he laid eyes on the dark secret of the core of the Anti-Monitor universe, the Anti Life Equation, a piece of the Presence that separated from Him, Mobius was cursed forever, turned into a destroyer of universes. Some time later, he met the New God Metron, to whom he willingly gave up his Mobius Chair to travel the universes (Darkseid War). Eventually, the Crisis On Infinite Earths of the 1980s caused the latest reboot (without giving Pandora or Imperiex time to do their thing). The Pre-Crisis multiverse continued to exist as ruins in a separate place called Multiverse-2, though several beings removed from their timelines (Superman and Hal Jordan from Pre-Flashpoint, and Barry Allen and Supergirl from Pre-Crisis) traveled back in time and avoided the Crisis, so the Pre-Crisis Multiverse co-exists with its ruins, perhaps as Multiverse-3 (Convergence).

Multiverse-1

After the last reboot, this is the current history, with many events that occur in each cycle: The Presence began to make Himself seen as The Source 19 billion years ago (Byrne). One of His creations, a being named Sila, seeded each planet with potential for life by raining meteorites in them containing Green, Red, etc. (Swamp Thing). There were already several living beings from previous cycles, such as Pandora, Imperiex or Pariah, who, in the ruins of the previous multiverse, made psychic contact with a portion of the Great Darkness. The Darkness did not intend to undo the cosmos, it simply wished to interact with the light from above, to participate in and observe the great stories of the multiverse. Its flickering was the only light it received. However, Pariah corrupted the fragment he touched, and it began to influence beings with the selfish desire to cause conflict with the light, even as it slept (Williamson).

Meanwhile, in an alternate future, Odin, Jove and Zeus came to fear the power of the Source and allied to destroy it: their attack caught the Source off guard, sending it into the past, where it presumably merged into its past self, but its yin was separated from its yang (Countdown to Final Crisis). The Great Darkness interceded so that the yang became the Anti-Life, (Williamson) which fell into the Center of the Antimatter Universe. The Light counteracted by creating its opposite, the Life Entity of the White Lanterns, at the center of the Positive universe, which is planet Earth (Darkseid War).

Another race that existed before creation itself came from the dimension called Darkworld; they were the Lords of Order and Chaos, incorporeal magical beings. When the universe properly began, the Lords were the first intelligent race along with the Guardians of the Universe. The Lords would create Doctor Fate, Blue Beetle, Amethyst, Atlantis, Hawk and Dove and the “Parliaments of Life” that spawned the natural forces of the world: The Green, The Red, The Grey, The Divided and The Rot (Justice League Dark).

The Lords, and the magic they and all magical beings use, is a manifestation of one of the 7 Primordial Anti-Crisis Forces that create multiverses; specifically, the one called the Sphere of the Gods. More specifically, magic is something called “scraps of creation”, described as the random errors in a computer code (Doomsday Clock).

The First World

When the Presence created the First World, GodWorld (aka Asgard, aka Urgrund), Sila seeded humanoid life into it. Fifteen billion years ago, its humanoid inhabitants attained godhood, thus becoming the Old Gods, and Urgrund became known as the Second World. These beings reached a pinnacle of immense power and ushered in a golden age of cultural and scientific advancement (Byrne).

The first of the Old Gods was Olgrun. Olgrun was immensely powerful, creating many worlds and bestowing wonders upon them. He was also wrathful, and in his anger killed his own beloved daughter. In time, the other Old Gods rose up against him and waged war against him for an age. Unable to truly kill him, they divided him into seven divine aspects, which they hid throughout the multiverse in devices meant to protect them from being claimed by the wrathful and unworthy. Among these devices was the artificial planetoid that would one day be known as Warworld Prime, which contained within it the aspect known as The Fire of Olgrun (Phillip Kennedy Johnson).

Five billion years ago, Urgrund went to war. At the center of this conflict was Lokee, god of mischief and bastard son of the prime god Wotan, who became the first god of evil (Mark Evanier). At that point, the Source finished recovering and punished the Gods for their future treachery by causing Ragnarok, splitting Urgrund in two in a great explosion in which nearly all the gods perished (Kirby). One of the Old Gods who managed to survive was Gog (JSA), who was corrupted by The Great Darkness. (Williamson)

Some 4.8 billion years ago, the remnants of GodWorld ended up creating two separate planets: Apokolips and Galactica, the world that would become New Genesis (Green Lanterns Rebirth).

When Sila planted seeds in the Solar System, they took root on three different planets: Earth, Jupiter and another one that was destroyed. On that last doomed planet evolved a collective fungal consciousness that thrived on the frequency of the Grey. The Source created Adam and Lilith in the Garden of Eden, which was also home to the first Parliament of Trees. When Lilith refused to obey men, God replaced her with Eve (Sandman). Lucifer betrayed God (Alan Moore) and corrupted humans, so God cast them out. After this, a war between The Green and The Gray destroyed Eden and froze it in what is now known as Antarctica (Swamp Thing). But that was what the Presence wanted, as now humans were mortal and had free will, being able to forge their own destinies, choosing virtue or sin, good or evil. With rebellion and sin, the concept of justice was also born, and celestial beings, first Eclipso (God’s Wrath, which caused the Flood of Noah) and then the Spectre (God’s Revenge, which caused the Plagues of Moses). Eons later, faithful angels like Zauriel, redeemed demons like Etrigan and corrupted demons like Neron played their roles and contributed to the great project.

Forty thousand years ago, the Great Darkness and Perpetua corrupted Barbatos, who murdered his father. Upon seeing Bruce Wayne in his Omega Sanction (Return of Bruce Wayne), he became obsessed with Batman, and decided to manipulate Bruce Wayne’s life in order to create Batman (Batman Lost).

The energy unleashed by Urgrund’s explosion spread throughout the universe, spawning the Godwave, which seeded worlds with the potential to give rise to their own gods. One such world was Earth, which produced its first gods 35,000 years ago. This was the beginning of the “Third World” (Byrne). Eventually, the main Hebrew, Greek, Egyptian, and Aboriginal gods formed the Circle of Eternity (Trinity War).

Thirty thousand years ago, the inhabitants of Apokolips and New Genesis gained divinity and traits similar to those of the Old Gods, but became divided in terms of moral alignment. The “Fourth World” began when these New Gods attained godhood and repeated the history of the Old Gods by going to war. Since the source was now split in half, it could only influence the New Gods minimally, like a hand writing with fire (Countdown to Final Crisis).

The Presence also created Jesus of Nazareth, who with his teachings started the religion of Christianity. When Jesus was born, Spectre was cast into Limbo because Vengeance and Forgiveness could not be on earth at the same time. After Jesus’ death on the cross, Spectre exploded from Limbo and swept the earth with his wrath to punish mankind until the Archangel Michael stopped him (John Ostrander). After betraying Jesus, Judas attempted suicide, but was transported to the Circle of Eternity, who forced him to wander Earth forever as the Phantom Stranger (Dan DiDio). 4000 years ago, Black Adam killed most of the Circle of Eternity except for the Wizard (Priest). The Wizard proceeded to form the Quintessence along with Guardians of the Universe, Greek gods, New Gods, the Spectre and Phantom Stranger (Kingdom Come; Scott Snyder).

Noting that the New Gods of New Genesis were committing genocide in their war against Apokolips and other unacceptable behavior for gods, the Source decided to combine with the Anti-Life to create a Fifth World. The Source wanted all gods to combine into beings like Infinity Man, but the individuality of gods like Darkseid made this impossible.

Originally, Mars was inhabited by the Burning Martians, a violent race that lived on fire. To prevent them from spreading throughout the universe, the Guardians of the Universe programmed them with a phobia of fire, and, over time, the Martians evolved into the Green and White races (Joe Kelly’s JLA). Three hundred years ago, Darkseid visited Mars. When he learned that the Green Martian philosophy was based on the “Equation of Life,” he postulated that its opposite must exist and began searching for the Anti-Life Equation (Ostrander’s Martian Manhunter).

Things that happened: Wonder Woman debuted in the 20th Century; the JSA existed; Clark Kent was Superboy; the Legion of Superheroes existed; Clark’s parents never died. (I’m listing these events because people will be made to forget about them in a few years.)

In 2002, Barbatos broke through Bruce Wayne’s window in the shape of a bat and convinced him to become Batman (Batman Lost).

Then, the Justice League had its classic debut; Wally West existed; the Teen Titans existed; Barry Allen got married; the rape of Sue Dibny and the mind-wiping of various heroes and villains occurred.

Crisis Era

Crisis on Infinite Earths (Crisis I)

In 2009 of the current timeline, Perpetua began fighting to free herself from the Source Wall, causing the Crisis on Infinite Earths. It occurred because the Anti-Monitor became evil when the Source Wall took away his Antimatter Universe’s job of being the border between the Multiverse and the Greater Omniverse. Without a job, the Anti-Monitor felt resentment towards his brother. For millions of years, Perpetua whispered to the Anti-Monitor to attack, but he was also influenced by the Great Darkness, who made him find the Anti-Life equation it created, driving him mad and compelling him to fight the champion of the light, the Monitor. The Darkness was defeated thanks to the efforts of the immune system of the Multiverse, superheroes. Barry Allen died. However, the contraction of the Multiverse into a single universe weakened the Light, causing the Darkness to attack in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing. This ended with a truce between Darkness and Light. (Since in the current timeline the multiverse never contracted, we haven’t been given an explanation as to how Alan Moore’s “American Gothic” happened yet.) The Crisis created a crack in the Source Wall, so Perpetua could corrupt beings more easily, resulting in the Crises happening more and more often.

Zero Hour (Crisis II)

One of the Crises caused by Perpetua was the Crisis in Time, Zero Hour; In 2011, Perpetua manipulated Parallax while the Great Darkness manipulated Extant, and both villains tried to cause a new big bang separately. The Crisis shook reality, creating a new crack in the Source Wall.

Bart Allen existed, Kon-El existed, Young Justice existed; Wally married and had children; Yz, Max Mercury, and Jesse Quick existed and were the Flash Family; Cassandra Cain was Batgirl; Stephanie Brown was Robin; Connor Hawke existed.

Infinite Crisis (Crisis III)

The compressed multiverse created a barrier that prevented the Source from combining with Anti-Life. To correct this, in 2013 the Source manipulated Alexander Luthor and Superboy-Prime into creating a new multiverse. Alexander Luthor was separately manipulated by Perpetua, while the Great Darkness corrupted Superboy-Prime. Luthor collapsed the multiverse back into a New Earth, but it was too small to contain the energy it held, so it ended up replicating into 52 identical universes. Another crack appeared in the Source Wall.

With the new multiverse, the Darkness managed to break its truce with the Light. The Monitors were created by the Source to delay the awakening of the Darkness. Mister Mind, manipulated by the Great Darkness, evolved and required the energy of the Multiverse to sustain himself. His feeding ate up years and events of each universe’s history, altering the Earths with each flap of his wings. This caused the Earths to change, becoming different from New Earth. The Source manipulated Booster Gold and the Monitors to stop him, but not to wage war on the Darkness, but so that the new Multiverse would be conducive to merge with the Anti-Life and create the Fifth World.

Final Crisis (Crisis IV)

In 2014, Darkseid was one of the few beings aware of the Darkness, and refused to go along with its plans, although he was manipulated by Perpetua despite of this. Darkseid manipulated “prophecy and destiny” to cause the Final Crisis and control Darkness. It’s possible that this involved manipulating quantum probabilities so that the future that created Anti-Life took place. In any case, the Crisis ended up creating a Fifth World, and Darkseid attracted the Darkness in the form of Mandrakk, albeit at the cost of his own life, as his Godhead was broken. To stop Mandrakk, the Monitors activated the multiverse’s immune system: the superheroes. Another crack appeared in the Wall Source.

Stephanie Brown became Batgirl.

Flashpoint Crisis (Crisis V)

When Barry Allen caused Flashpoint in 2015, Jon Osterman entered Earth Prime because he realized that the DC Universe was full of hope in humanity and traveled there to find a place among those people and start a new life. His visions showed him that, in four years, an arms race between metahumans was going to spark World War III, which was going to bring Manhattan into a confrontation with Superman, and then he saw nothing. After Mandrakk’s defeat, The Great Darkness understood that superheroes were his real enemy, so he corrupted Jon so that his reaction to his future visions was to modify the timeline and take years off the heroes, although Jon believed he was doing this to fix the rifts caused by the various Crises in the Multiverse.

Manhattan did the following:

-Tricked Pandora into convincing Barry to merge three separate timelines. The merger allowed him to erase ten years of the reversed universe.

-Manipulated Mr. Twister so that, in order to defeat him, the Teen Titans would have to mindwipe the entire world and everyone would forget that any incarnation of the Titans ever existed.

-Used Abra Kadabra to trap Wally West and his children inside the Speed Force, which caused them to be forgotten even by their family; Jon also revived Reverse-Flash to trap Jay Garrick, Yz, Max Mercury, and Jesse Quick in the Speed Force; Jon erased the memories of Barry’s marriage to Iris; Jon manipulated Dark Opal to erase all memory of Young Justice and have Bart Allen exiled into the Speed Force. The entire Flash Family was erased.

-(Probably) Manipulated Dr. Glory of Star Labs to exile Superboy on Gemworld, making everyone forget about him (Young Justice).

-Erased Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain’s memories of being Robin/Batgirls.

-Made Connor Hawke disappear and erased all memories of him.

-Erased memories of the Justice League’s classic debut; the rape of Sue Dibny and the mind-washing of several heroes and villains; and the death of Barry Allen during the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

-To study how changing Superman’s history altered the metaverse, he prevented Wonder Woman from debuting in the 20th Century and murdered Alan Scott. With no heroes before Superman’s arrival, Superman didn’t become Superboy, so the Legion of Super-Heroes was never founded. Manhattan also murdered Clark’s parents, who taught him to be optimistic, and replaced them with Jor-El, whom he saved from Krypton’s demise and conditioned by showing him the worst of humanity.

-(Probably) manipulated Mister Mxyzptlk to split Superman into red and blue halves.

-Revived Batman’s father (and probably manipulated him to accept Bane’s plan to tempt Bruce to stop being Batman).

That same year, Barbatos, corrupted by Perpetua and the Darkness, began orchestrating events seemingly unrelated to Batman, such as his Court of Owls kidnapping Batman and putting him in a maze that forces him to drink water from a magical fountain. This was just the first step in a grand ritual for his body to become a portal to the Dark Multiverse.

Two years later, in 2017, Wally West escaped from the Speed Force, warning everyone of Manhattan’s threat. Doctor Manhattan killed Owlman and Metron after they tried to access the secrets of the universe, killed Pandora when she realized he was responsible for all the sins she had been blamed for, and dropped a button in the Batcave for Batman to track down and meet his father with the goal of succumbing his heroism, due to the influence of Darkness.

Convergence (Crisis VI)

Brainiac of New Earth managed to escape Manhattan’s manipulations because his quest for knowledge had caused him to surpass the Source Wall just before Flashpoint. From there, Brainiac studied the previous versions of the Multiverse, and seeing the various crises caused him to evolve into an amalgamation of different incarnations of himself from extinct universes and timelines. Using his powers, he sent Pre-Flashpoint’s Superman and Hal Jordan, and Pre-Crisis’ Barry Allen and Supergirl, back in time, causing them to avoid the Crisis on Infinite Earths and revive a copy of the Pre-Crisis Multiverse. (But nobody cares.) 

Metal (Crisis VII)

Meanwhile, the right hand of the Great Darkness, the one that had made a truce with the Light in American Gothic, became the Empty Hand, and it transformed the pre-Crisis Multiverse’s carcass into an army of Gentry (Multiversity).

That same year, Barbatos completed the ritual to turn Batman into a portal to the Dark Multiverse, and attacked. Although Barbatos was defeated, it had the consequence of breaking the Source Wall and freeing Perpetua.

Doomsday Clock

In 2019, the events Manhattan saw took place, but Clark refused to hit Jon, which filled him with a wave of hope. Jon understood that the force driving the metaverse was hope, represented and spearheaded by Superman. Using his Connective Energy powers, Jon reversed all of his changes so that the JSA, the Legion, Superboy, and Clark’s parents would always be alive. In the new timeline, people simply could not remember them until this date.

Death Metal (Anti-Crisis)

In 2021, Perpetua attacked, but was defeated. After reversing her damage by combining Manhattan’s Connective Energy with Crisis Energies, Darkseid gained enough power to once again attempt to steal Darkness’ power, but ended up controlled by Darkness and became his Left Hand. 

Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths

In 2022, the Darkness corrupted by Pariah was purified when Pariah was sent to a paradise world where he can live in his native reality that was destroyed in the Crisis on Infinite Earths. It would have been easier for him to go to the Multiverse-3 created by Convergence and we would have been spared all this.

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