If You Want To Make an Omniverse, You’re Going to Have to Break a Few Barriers Supporting the Very Fabric of Time and Space

Last Wednesday, on the way to the comic store, Colonel Doom and I were having a conversation about newuniversal #1. As a relative newbie to the world of Marvel Comics, the good Colonel had never heard of this “New Universe,” which the new series by Warren Ellis and Salvador LaRocca was based on. So, being the good friend that I am, I broke into a long-winded explanation of what exactly the New Universe was.

Quickly, I hit a snag in my elucidation. The New Universe is, as we all know, part of the Marvel Omniverse. It is not, however, part of the Marvel Multiverse. The concepts of an Omniverse and a Multiverse may seem elementary to those of us who have devoted our every waking moment to learning every meaningless bit of comic book trivia we can. However, to those comic fans with any semblance of a life (like Colonel Doom), they are very strange concepts indeed. So I had a little work to do before I could properly explain the great Jim Shooter experiment of the mid-1980s.

The Multiverse, I clarified, is a collection of the “core” Marvel universes, the universes that are for the most part an off-shoot of the “real” Marvel universe, designated #616 (Marvel-616). I left that universe designation out of the conversation though, so as not to exacerbate the situation (either that or I was just off my nerd game a bit). The easiest way to tell if a universe is part of the Marvel Multiverse is to look at the characters that exist in it. If there’s a Peter Parker, a Steve Rogers, a Scott Summers or a Reed Richards, chances are the universe is part of the Multiverse. The Age of Apocalypse is part of the Multiverse. House of M, Days of Future Past and Heroes Reborn are part of the Multiverse. Marvel Zombies is part of the Multiverse. However, it isn’t always so cut and dry.

It’s never (to my knowledge) been stated unequivocally whether the Ultimate Marvel Universe is part of the Multiverse or not. At first glance you might assume it is due to all the familiar names. But upon closer inspection, character timelines are altered relative to one another. In the 1602 universe, character timelines are altered drastically, but relative to each other they are fundamentally the same. When the Fantastick Four debuted, Peter Parquagh and the Witchbreed (X-Men) were teenagers just as they are in Marvel-616. In the Ultimate Universe, however, Wolverine is in his 30s when the X-Men are high school and college age. In Marvel-616, Wolverine would have been well over 100 by the time the X-Men were that old. Since the Ultimate Universe isn’t essentially a divergent pathway of the Marvel-616, it’s more likely that it isn’t part of the Multiverse. But that’s not the true demarcation of what is and isn’t part of the Multiverse.

The actual defining factor that differentiates a universe that is included in the Marvel Multiverse from one that is not is the cosmic hierarchy that does or does not exist in the universe. Every universe that is part of the Marvel Multiverse has the same set of cosmic beings: an Eternity, an Infinity, a race of Watchers, a Living Tribunal, etc. In fact, as evidenced by the Watchers’ knowledge of all alternate realities (in the What If…? series), there may be only one entity called Eternity (and one Living Tribunal, one race of Watchers, etc.) that exists in every universe in the Multiverse simultaneously.

It is safe to assume that all universes that deviate from Marvel-616 have these cosmic entities, because we’ve seen that Marvel-616 has them. In most universes that are not divergent from Marvel-616 (like the New Universe or the Supreme Power universe), the issue of whether or not these beings exist has not been addressed, therefore it can not be stated for certain whether the universe is part of the Multiverse or not. However, it is probably better to assume that a universe is not part of the Multiverse until it has been shown that it is.

The Omniverse was a lot simpler to explain to Colonel Doom (remember the premise? I’m telling all this to Colonel Doom on the way to the comic book shop). It is simply the collection of every universe. The entire Multiverse is part of the Omniverse. In addition, the New Universe and Supreme Power universe are part of the Omniverse. So is the DC Universe. So is the Image Universe. So is the universe without any shrimp. So is the universe with nothing but shrimp. So is the universe where chocolate raindrops fall on a field of lollipops inside of a bunny rabbit’s anus. Even the universe that you and I exist in, the very universe that includes this very blog with this very post about the Omniverse, is part of the Omniverse. Did I just blow your mind?

Anyway, so essentially the Marvel Multiverse is a sub-set of universes inside of the Marvel Omniverse. All of the universes in the Marvel Multiverse share the cosmic hierarchy and relative timelines of Marvel-616. Also, universes in the Marvel Multiverse can still crossover with universes outside the Marvel Multiverse but within the Omniverse, (which of course it would be impossible for any universe to not be in). And of course, the Marvel Multiverse is not to be confused with the DC Multiverse, which is actually an Omniverse, as there are no sub-sets of universes as far as DC is concerned. And since there is only one universe after Infinite Crisis, apparently DC no longer recognizes that there is an Omniverse at all. Even though they recognized some crossovers like JLA/Avengers as in-continuity and Marvel-616 didn’t merge into New Earth at the end of Infinite Crisis. So I guess Marvel-616 doesn’t exist anymore as far as DC is concerned (harsh!), even though the DC Universe still exists in the Marvel Omniverse.

Got all that?

If not, here’s a handy Venn diagram as requested by Colonel Doom:

[Note: The ride from Colonel Doom’s house to the comic store isn’t a very long trip, so obviously I wasn’t able to go over the subject in this much detail. I’m offering it here to better clarify things not only to Colonel Doom but also to anyone else that might have randomly searched for “shrimp” and “anus” on Google and stumbled upon our blog.]