Did we lose? Did the Gentry and the Empty Hand already do the damage...

Did we lose? Did the Gentry and the Empty Hand already do the damage? Was Multiversity just a band-aid on the bullet wound?

if you read Ultra Comics to the end rather than stop when he tells you to, you contributed to the problem and got yourself infected

That you're here on Sup Forums asking this years after the story came out proves that you're sucked into the Oblivion Machine, so yes you did lose

You were supposed to get a job and a gf and make something of yourself

Damn

I still haven't been able to fully parse the meaning of the Gentry. I had theories but then I read an interview with Morrison where he says each of the Gentry represents a villain archetype. So I guess in that case Empty Hand should represent the classic Multiversal threat taken to the extreme?

But if they're just villain archetypes, why are they invading the Multiverse, why are they corrupting it? Is it supposed to mean evil is winning? If they're supposed to represent all the bad thoughts that can get into our minds, why are they represented by villain archetypes instead of real-world problems?

>IGN: I was kind of surprised at how open-ended the conclusion was in Multiversity #2. One of the themes you've explored a lot in your previous DC work was the idea that these stories and these conflicts between good and evil never really end. Was that something you were trying to reinforce with this ongoing conflict between the Gentry and this new Justice Incarnate team?

Morrison: Always I've thought, and particularly now in the era of event-driven comics where characters are subjected to these absolutely life-ruining events in every story arc, I wanted to sum up what all these stories are. It's where the characters get to the end and they appear to have beaten the bad guy, and then an even bigger bad guy shows up and says, "I'll get you later." The real big bad guy at the end - he looks like the Ultra Comics character, but he's also the reader. The empty hand of the reader when he puts the comic down and everything ends. But like the bad guy, he can also come back in full force and say, "You'll meet me again."

I like my books to have multiple meanings. There's multiple ways of reading it. The big bad at the end represents all the big bads in every story. We just beat that villain, now here comes the Anti-Monitor. We just beat the Anti-Monitor, now here comes something that's bigger than big. That was my thinking - the ultimate bigger than big, the ultimate universe destroyer. It's the reader, who chooses to either participate or not.

I haven't been following the big two for years now so I suppose I won and Morrison would be proud

Yeah I understand what Empty Hand represents in terms of being a villain, and I get that he represents the unending nature of comic universes.

But I don't get what the rest of the Gentry represent in that context. Is it saying that we create villains in stories simply by reading them? That conflict exists in stories only by the demand of the reader?

>That conflict exists in stories only by the demand of the reader?
yes. demand creates supply. there are no happy endings because our appetites are insatiable.

So why do the Gentry spread through Ultra Comics?

>But if they're just villain archetypes, why are they invading the Multiverse, why are they corrupting it?
They're terraforming our continuity so that is better suits their sensibilities.

On Earth-0 this means they're rewriting Batman's history continuously. On Earth-2 they've sleared the way for an alien invasion that devastated the planet and killed a large portion of the population. On Earth-33 they've stoked racial tensions and contributed tot he implausible rise of neo-faccist Nazis as a legitimate political party.

Basically they're turning our world into a place we don't want to live in but one they thrive in.

>Is it saying that we create villains in stories simply by reading them?
He's saying that grimdark exists because we choose to read it despite all the warning signs and a man in a business suit flat-out telling us that if we read this, we'll get more like it.
And then we reads about fairy tale characters who are cannibals. Because this is the narrative end point of grimdark comics -- taking something innocent and turning it into something horrible.
Like turning Stanley and His Monster into a dark story metaphor for sexual abuse, and then snuffing the kid in the end.

as long as we have superheroes, we'll never lose.

Because Ultra Comics IS the reader and the reader propagates the cycle of destruction.

That's an interesting idea but then you have things like the Nazi Earth that were obviously inherently grimdark, but it was being invaded all the same.

Pretty much what they are attempting to do is to Terraform the multiverse itself into a hellish realm, one that is better suited to their tastes. Being demons, the multiverse naturally rejects their existence because of how fundamentally *Wrong* they are, and thus they need to twist it's internal systems (the various continuities) into something that can sustain them and allow their existence. Their ultimate goal is to pretty much make it so that the multiverse is so twisted and warped that it rejects US instead of them.

So does that extend to fandom, maybe? Saying fans of classic comics are no long favored, and new fans that like things like zombies, horror, etc. and more realistic, gritty styles are taking over?

Pretty much. The Gentry are a rejection of everything that made comics, cartoons, and entertainment in general *Good*, and replacing it with cancerous, mind-warping corruption. All in order to create a multiverse that can house them. And once they have finished feasting upon a multiverse, reducing it to a degenerate cesspool of broken minds and souls, they move onto the next.

Well, you lost the moment you read this garbage.

What are your thoughts on Multiverse-2 or whatever the other multiverse they reference is? Do you think it's the Marvel multiverse like some theorized, or the previous iteration of the DC multiverse, or just a nonspecific other multiverse?

Supposedly, it was the pre-Flashpoint iteration of the Multiverse, which had already been tearing itself apart at the seams, which likely made it easier for the Gentry to infest it than they would have in a healthy multiverse.

Then that goes back to my original interpretation. So maybe the Gentry destroyed the multiverse by making it get reset for new readers, and that's what they want to do to the current one.

Yeah, and now that I'm thinking about it, resetting the multiverse has a tendency to remove many characters that were once a part of that multiverse, removing anyone who could have been a potential threat to them. So for instance, they reset the current Rebirth iteration of the Multiverse. Goodbye all the new generation, and any potential heroes to stand against them.

Wut, the Pre-Flashpoint universe and the current universe are the same

>What are your thoughts on Multiverse-2
Despite Morisson's intentions it's almost certainly going to be the Dark Multiverse on the obverse of our own in Snyder's latest... masterpiece.

But that's not true. All my favorite books could have a good end and I'd be fine with that.

I'll just find something else until that ends.

That's definitely what They want you to believe.