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YouTubeTape #5 – The Monitor
The Fifth Tape: DC Dave and Doug Adamson play Tape #5, which looks at …
The Monitor
With guest host Martin Gray
Timestamps:
- 2:58 – Crisis News
- 8:30 – Martin Gray
- 26:10 – Promo: 8TW Audio Works
- 27:15 – The Monitor
- 54:10 – Infinite Earth Spotlight
- 59:27 – Promo: Mike’s Comic Shop Roadshow
- 1:01:00 – Notes from the Multiverse
Leave comments for this episode and view episode related images at our website at: The Monitor Tapes.com / 5
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Find Martin Gray at Too Dangerous For a Girl or Facebook or X / Twitter
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Crisis on Infinite Earths: Absolute Edition
New History of the DC Universe #3 Solicitation
New History of the DC Universe #1 – The Annotated Variant Cover by Scott Koblish
New History of the DC Universe Hardcover Preorder
Promo: Mike’s Comic Shop Roadshow
Music: Achilles
by Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
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Great talk and great guest. Always like hearing Martin’s thoughts on things.
I am so glad you reviewed the pre-Crisis Monitor appearances. What an odd collection and semi-serious plots for this cosmic being hoping to save the multiverse. ‘The best way for me to defy a reality destroying antimatter wave is by sending Slipknot to fight Firestorm!’ … ummm no.
And as you say, his decision to make Lyla kill him to release his energies instead of just offing himself seems a little selfish. Perhaps he worried that if she didn’t fulfill her dark compulsion she would act on someone else, like Alex Luthor? Maybe that’s my no-prize.
Anyways, the Monitor never seemed like he had his stuff together enough to be a threat to the Anti-Monitor. Perhaps the best thing he did was die?
Sorry, I’m usually more positive than this.
I think you earned that No Prize, Anj!
‘Perhaps the best thing he did was die.’ That was unexpected! I do think the Monitor deserves credit for gathering the Super People and explaining the nature of the Crisis. OK, so he wasted three months…
Is Marv Wolfman the George Lucas of the DCU? (plan-wise)
I wish I knew enough about Star Wars to get that!
That’s me, I’m one of Martin’s babies, comic-wise at least! As I’m people are sick of me mentioning my second DC story I read was the infamous Clark and Barda make a Porno from again John Byrne! And somehow I’m still reading comics!
I’m glad that Power Girl got the appropriate amount of love. I’d like to point out that, technically, at the end of the Crisis Power Girl is still Kryptonian; it’s only in her Secret Origin issue (#11) that she gets her (ugh) Atlantian Origins! Which lasts right the way through to the next Crisis, though things get a little fuzzy long before that point!
Oh gosh, thank you for clarifying when Kara’s origin went kablooey. The best thing about that tweak was the shortlived addition of the Arion symbol to Power Girl’s belt… I’ve just gone back and reread the Power Girl reorigin in Secret Origins. Oh boy, it’s far worse than I remember. It’s a bit suspicious that in the same issue as we get the origin of the Golden Age Hawkman, 45,000 years ago Kara has a big blond brother named Khater… I wonder if Paul Kupperberg had a plan.
Hundreds of duplicated DC characters in different but equally valid realities/time periods with modest to wildly divergent variances in look, powers, and personal relations concurrently active = Not confusing.
A couple of ill-defined NPCs making brief cryptic cameos unrelated to the main story to hype up an event still in development = Horribly confusing, and grounds to besmirch the professional credentials of everyone involved.
Make it make sense, Martin.
I like the design of The Monitor, but I would, since he’s basically Caucasian Rasta Martian Manhunter. Having 52 DC-Watchers, or even resurrecting the original, was indicative of the creative bankruptcy of the Didio regime. I never had a problem with The Monitor/Anti-Monitor within the specific and exclusive context of COIE. It’s obviously a play on Christ/Anti-Christ, and looked at objectively, does that really make any more sense? At least there’s widespread agreement upon the defining parameters for what a “monitor” is, and no blood was ever shed over a dispute on the matter. I was even okay with the Black Lantern Corps rings being forged from the Anti-Monitor’s armor, contributing to the inherent unholiness of that collective. Once he came back as a going concern in regular monthly comics, you couldn’t conceal the flaws in the concept with the spectacle that surrounded it. I do feel stupid typing “Anti-Monitor,” especially while living in the time of the Anti-Christ. Childish, reductive, and lame. That said, I’ll mock him with the title “Lookcifer,” overemphasis on the “loo,” because he looks like a latrine.
Instead of bringing Anti-Monitor back repeatedly, it might have been a neat swerve to play into Monitor’s inconsistent characterization. After Anti-Monitor is destroyed and the Earths consolidated, it could be that it was all according to Monitor’s secret plot to become the god of the new reality. He faked his death, manipulated the positive matter champions, claimed Anti-Monitor’s released energies, and then moves on the new continuity in the final issues.
I had an aversion to “butch” women when I was a kid, but for whatever reason, I was intrigued by Lady Quark. I had little investment in the Pre-Crisis DC Universe, and the multiverse was a stupid mess that contributed to putting me off their comics. However, it was clearly laid out in my one contemporaneous issue of COIE that Quark was “sadly the only survivor of her universe,” so she was unique. She didn’t look like any other heroine I’d ever seen, was clearly very powerful, and had that new car smell. She appeared very sparingly until she turned up in L.E.G.I.O.N., which was an entirely appropriate place for her land. In retrospect, she was clearly modeled after Annie Lennox, and I’d have liked to have seen that played out in full “Little Bird” fashion– make of her a multiverse of personas as she suffers PTSD from her entire reality being wiped away. Actually, was it? Does she remember, like Psycho Pirate, or did they downgrade her to a lost world, or what? Anyway, she’s intriguing.
Pariah was less so, but his handling in Superman: Space Age was one of the few things that I liked about that book.
‘ Caucasian Rasta Martian Manhunter’ – that’s perfect, Frank!
Oh, this is embarrassing. I’d never made the link between ‘Anti-Monitor’ and ‘Antichrist’. Oh boy…
I do like your ideas for further stories involving the Monitor. I think they’d have led to better stories than those we did get.
Lady Quark as Annie Lennox, I can see that. In my defence, the white hair made Tashana (I researched that for the show, I have to use her proper name at least once) look a lot older than Lennox.
Pariah – aka Captain Chocolate Fireguard.
Great episode! I loved the look at the Monitor’s and Lyla’s evolving motivations and characterizations. Can’t blame Lyla for wanting to get a little 30th-century shopping in! I’d do the same, given the chance.
I can’t say I ever cared for the Monitor or Anti-Monitor’s designs (A-M’s is better). Trying to think of a better name for the Anti-Monitor is tough. It seems like the Anti is the most important part of the name, but also the worst part, because his name is literally saying “I’m not that guy; I’m AGAINST that guy.” And we just don’t care about the guy he’s so worked up about. So maybe make him the Antithesis? That way he’s anti-everything!
‘Antithesis’ is good, it’s ringing a bell. Did Doctor Strange fight someone of that name… excuse me while I check the interweb. Ah, that goofy bad guy from Teen Titans #53. He was rubbish, Rob, yeah, let’s give the name to The Monitor!
Hey nerds,
Another great episode. I appreciate the effort Martin put in with all the pre-reading. I would not be the right guest for this episode.
I remember complaining about the names The Monitor and The Anti-monitor, but have never put any serious effort into coming up with something better. Judging Moni on what he actually does I could see him suiting a Stan Lee style bombastic title like THE INCONSISTENT DABBLER.
But trying to do better, Moni could be called something more dramatic like THE DISTANT which is equally meaningful and meaningless. Then you could slap an illiterate ominous monicker on Anti-Mo like DEVOID.
Anyway, keep up the entertainment. That was a solid joke about always checking Power Girl’s costume for a symbol, Doug.
I like all of these names. Paul. I have another idea, Monitor is like a space shepherd, herding heroes, so how about The Pastor?His evil opponent would be The Anti-Pastor, and he’d speak in an Italian accent.
I shouldn’t have read that while having a drink this morning, I now need to clean up my keyboard. Top top top joke there Martin.
ALLITERATE, dammit
As for naming –
Anti-Monitor should be something like ‘The Devourer’ as all he seems interested in is eating and absorbing the energy of the positive universes.
So trying to think of another name for Monitor based on the Anti-Monitors new name is trickier. Most of them are taken already (although maybe not in 1985) – Protector? Sentry? Sentinel?
Maybe Provider?
The Devoured and…THE REGURGITATOR!
Or not.
Haven’t really commented on your show so far, although I listened to each episode. The first one, I got distracted when a copy of Amazing Heroes Post Crisis issue I found on Ebay, arrived. The other episodes I was going to comment later, but. I have been enjoying the show. Mostly I just wanted to let you know that the Crisis showed up in the first issue of Trinity.
Crisis of Infinite Corgis is a somewhat whimsical and meta take and features Pariah waxing prose reminiscent of the best (worst) of Lee. It also sparked an idea for a show you might want to consider. Crisis sequels or knockoffs, or possibly homages. Such as Big Bang’s Criss Cross Crisis.
Just a thought.
Thanks Hal, I’ll have a look when Trinity gets to DC Infinite next month. She’s such a terrible character, I can wait!