Monitors

The Monitors are an alien race from the DC Universe. They function as the guardians of the DC multiverse. During the first multiverse, there were only two, the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor, who oversaw the multiverse and the antimatter universe respectively. Both were killed during the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths. After the creation of the new multiverse, a new race of 52 different Monitors is seen to be active trying to protect the multiverse from corruption as a community. Each monitor is assigned to its own world, and they all vary at least slightly in appearance.

Controversy emerges for the Monitors when two with radically opposing viewpoints argue about how the multiverse should be maintained, the chief concern being the presence of "Multiversal Anomalies" (people who have hopped from world to world). Monitor Solomon of Earth-8 believes such disturbances should be immediately eradicated, and goes as far as to hunt down and kill Duela Dent. Despite his violence and zeal, he manages to convert almost all of the Monitors to his way of thinking. However, New Earth's monitor, Bob, believes a much more peaceful approach should be taken, and establishes the Challengers of the Unknown, a group made of anomalies to help him track down Ray Palmer who he believes is the only man capable of averting the upcoming Great Disaster.

The violent actions of the majority of the Monitors, including the genocide of the Forerunners, attracted the ire of Monarch, who believed them to be tyrants. Using the Bleed as his headquarters, he gathered an Army from all over the multiverse to challenge and destroy them, almost succeeding, culminating in the destruction of Earth-51. With Monarch's whereabouts unknown, all of the Monitors survived the Monarch War, except for Bob who was specifically killed by Solomon who attempted to directly absorb Bob and amass Bob's power for himself.

Although the Monitors were originally very close (some were specifically female while the bulk were male gendered), they have been changed drastically developing individual personalities and choosing through mutual best interest rather than a resulting singular mental/intellectual focus as shown when their base individual realities were drastically changed by Mister Mind during the end portion of the interdimensional 52 event. Thus the Monitors have also changed to reflect them, and have since been becoming more and more individual and acting in mannerisms that would be considered individual greed of their particular reality and at times of their own individual person which resulted in the attack and removal of Solomon from their collective assembly.

Recognizing that the Monitors are more or less now completely individuals and thus increasingly dangerous to the stability of other individual realities, the Monitor of the destroyed Earth-51 Nix Uotan has recently put together a team to monitor the Monitors. The Monitor Guardian team consists of Ray Palmer, Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner and Forager.

The Monitors were eliminated as a very powerful species as part of Nix Uotan's plan to safeguard the 52 individual realities from the Monitors' own vampiric nature as well as the plan instigated by Darkseid to reformat the universe to his own designs. Nix was reborn as a human teenager on Earth-0 with some remembrance of his existence as a Monitor.

It was confirmed that only Nix Uotan himself survived the extinction of his race. Thus, only himself and the Anti-Monitor remain as representatives of this set of beings, though technically the Anti-Monitor is not part of their race.

See also:

Monitors