DC Comics' editorial department was going where no comics company had gone before. The idea of a company-wide crossover was entirely new, so everyone was feeling their way through the process. Marv Wolfman and Len Wein were charged with overseering the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS event, which had been percolating since 1981, then delayed slightly to coincide with the company's 50th Anniversary in 1985.

Marv had come up with the idea for the Monitor long before he became a professional writer, but he incorporated the character into the story, which was designed to collapse the Multiverse to a single universe with a streamlined continuity. To provide readers a hunt that something big was coming, he hit on the notion of having the Monitor mysteriously appear in every one of DC's series, regardless of the era in which they were set.

To test the waters for this idea, Marv and George Perez first showed the Monitor in New Teen Titans #21 (July 1982).

In a January 1983 memo, executive editor Dick Giordano first laid out the editorial what the series, then titled "The History of the DC Universe," was going to accomplished. Here, editors were instructed to work into their series at least two appearances of the Monitor observing the heroes and villains in action.