Collective Man
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| Collective Man | |
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| Abilities | Ability to merge into a single being possessing five times the physical and mental ability of a single Tao-Yu brother Ability to temporarily increase these powers by mentally drawing upon outside energy, while in a collective state Ability to communicate telepathically and teleport to each other via psychic/spiritual-link Infectious replication Assimilative size alteration. |
The Collective Man (Sun, Chang, Ho, Lin, and Han Tao-Yu) is a Chinese superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The Collective Man is actually an identity shared by the Tao-Yu brothers, a set of quintuplets. They possess the mutant power to merge into one body, which variously possesses the collective abilities of all five men or all the people of China. The brothers also share a psychic/spiritual link that allows them to telepathically communicate and teleport to one another.
Publication history
The Collective Man first appeared in The Incredible Hulk vol. 2 #250 (Aug. 1980), and was created by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema.
Fictional character biography
The five Tao-Yu brothers were born in
Some time after the contest, the Collective Man fought the
Later, the Collective Man, now restored to full power, was mystically altered by the fallen god
The Collective Man, as part of China's version of the
Months later, the Collective Man invaded San Francisco's organized crime circuit,[4] while its protector, Wolverine[5] was incapacitated by a "mutant flu" bioweapon released as part of the X-Men: Quarantine storyline. He engaged and was defeated by a group of "substitute" X-Men consisting of Angel, Storm, Dazzler, Pixie, and Northstar.
Collective Man and the People's Defense Force meet
Collective Man later represented the Chinese government when he attended
Powers and abilities
The five Tao-Yu brothers have the mutant ability to mentally synchronize the atoms of their bodies and merge themselves into a single superhuman being. It is possible for only a few brothers to merge into this collective being, however, they prefer to merge all at once.
While merged into their collective state, the brothers possess the sum total of their combined physical and mental capabilities. The Collective Man is capable of further increasing these traits to vast levels by mentally concentrating on the image of millions of his countrymen, a magical ability granted by the Babylonian god Marduk. However, he is only able to do so for a brief period of time. He has increased his powers to levels sufficient to physically overpower Sasquatch in one on one combat.[8]
Following such a deployment of energy, the Collective Man is rendered unconscious. The length of time in which he remains unconscious depends upon the degree of exertion. If the Collective Man taps into his countryman's physical and mental energies for too long, it can potentially prove fatal.
The brothers also possess a psi/spiritual link that lets them communicate telepathically and teleport to each other's location. Sometime later they displayed the ability of self-spawning, where the brothers in separate or unified form can convert others into collective man clones who follow their every directive.[9] These overwritten clones can also biophysically merge with one another into the prime Collective Man to become a massive giant, pooling all their variable physical abilities into it.[10]
This turning ability seems to have no discernible limits as he/they were capable of converting and assimilating near the entire population of China to become a continent spanning kaiju.[11] But maintaining his enlarged form is also strenuous; prolonged use causes their construct to collapse due to the strain.
In addition, they have also been shown to be decently skilled martial artists in peak human physical condition.
References
- ^ X-Force Annual #3 (Oct. 1994). Marvel Comics.
- ^ Civil War: X-Men #1. Marvel Comics.
- ^ The Mighty Avengers #28. Marvel Comics.
- ^ The Uncanny X-Men #531. Marvel Comics.
- ^ Wolverine: Manifest Destiny
- ^ All-new Inhumans #5-6. Marvel Comics.
- ^ Avengers vol. 8 #11. Marvel Comics.
- ^ Marvel Super-Heroes Contest of Champions #3. Marvel Comics.
- ^ X-Men #159 (Sept. 2004). Marvel Comics.
- ^ X-Men #160 (Oct. 2004). Marvel Comics.
- ^ Citizen V and the V-Battalion: the Everlasting #2 (May, 2002). Marvel Comics.
External links
- Collective Man at the Marvel Universe
- Collective Man at The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe
- Collective Man at the Marvel Comics Database
- Collective Man at UncannyXmen.net
- Collective Man at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)