Taneleer TivanThe Collector

As an Elder of the Universe, the Collector has spent millennia acquiring the greatest prizes across the universe and is obsessed with his ever-growing collection. But he has a higher purpose: preserving the future from ultimate destruction.

Nothing can deter him from his goal, and no one—not even the mighty Avengers—can stop the Collector from seizing his coveted artifacts.

Elder of the Universe

Taneleer Tivan, also known as the Collector, is one of the Elders of the Universe—a group of ancient and powerful extraterrestrials that arose following the formation of all things. The Elders have lived longer than almost anyone else in the universe; their life forces sustained mainly by their monomaniacal obsessions with select pursuits. The Collector is obsessed with collecting items ranging from mystical artifacts and technological devices to animals and even entire civilizations.

Though little is known of his early life or his long-dead native race, the Collector did have a family—a wife and daughter, Matani and Carina. He also had a clear motivation in life: to collect artifacts and specimens of every race to preserve the future. This motivation stemmed from his gift of prophecy, which foresaw coming threats to all life in the universe, including the Mad Titan Thanos who sought to destroy the universe.

Fascinated by other races, cultures, and technologies, the Collector acquired and stored samples of these things in order to preserve them from the disasters he foresaw. He pursued this mission for countless years, until it became an obsession—his original motivation all but forgotten. Lacking her husband’s obsessive drive, Matani gradually lost the will to live once she had finished raising their daughter; she finally died of apathy roughly three billion years ago. Mourning her, the Collector sank deeper into his obsession and continued to expand his collection.

Throughout his existence, he has amassed an immeasurable collection spread across many locations on many worlds, filling his countless private museums and zoos and his huge personal spacecraft with objects and entities he regards as interesting, unique, or admirable. Utterly ruthless and implacable in pursuit of his goals, he has had no qualms about imprisoning or even killing for the betterment of his collection.

More than Mortal

In either of his two physical forms, the Collector is an immortal capable of manipulating cosmic energies. In his traditional humanoid form, he has limited physical abilities and stamina due to advanced age, having apparently devoted less of his energies to physical self-enhancement than most other Elders. While his cosmic energy powers are diminished by age and neglect, they are still sufficient enough to perform feats such as reshaping physical matter.

In his more alien form, the Collector has super human strength, is massive in size, and can easily wield cosmic energy, performing feats such as limited shape-shifting, increasing his own size, and firing powerful energy blasts. The Collector claims that his more alien incarnation is his true form, and that his humanoid incarnation is merely a disguise.

The Collector is wholly incapable of dying thanks to Death barring the Elders from her realm. He also has a limited telepathic rapport with his fellow Elders. And his precognitive powers give him brief, random glimpses of possible futures, usually apocalyptic ones, though he requires meditation to clarify the details of these visions.

The Collector has accumulated billions of years of knowledge regarding the cultures, languages, rituals, and technologies of countless alien races. He maintains museums and zoos at various locations throughout the universe, and has even converted entire worlds into museums and specimen habitats, or created artificial planets for the same purpose. He also stores a large portion of his collection in his personal interstellar spacecraft. Though vast, this vessel can be concealed by shifting into subspace, maintaining a roughly phone booth-sized portal to conventional space. The craft has been wrecked more than once, but the Collector has often replaced or rebuilt it.

The Collector’s special cosmic viewer can locate and observe virtually anyone or anything in the universe—even within other time periods. His time probe can also move beings and objects to or from other times. His teleportation technology can pluck a target from any location and beam it into his ship. His various headquarters usually include containment devices to restrain his collected captives, notably stasis tubes that place their occupants in suspended animation. He stores larger groups or entire populations of living beings within his starship by shrinking them to a tiny size before housing them in artificial ecosystems that duplicate their original natural environments.

When necessary, the Collector uses items from his collection as tools or weapons. His handheld temporal assimilator can transport him and at least one passenger to other time periods. His obedience potion renders those who consume it subservient to his will. His cape, cut from a legendary Persian flying carpet, enables him to fly. He also formerly possessed the Reality Gem, which alters both the perception and the substance of reality, but he never fully learned how to utilize its power before he lost it.

Other notable artifacts and devices the Collector has used include a crystal ball from an ancient Tibetan monastery which radiates mind-numbing mystic rays, an energy-discharging Vandarian power wand, a “child’s toy” from Dergos that fires pellets which release a gas that freezes mechanical components, a magical lamp that can summon a mystical four-headed djinn, and a flute-like Kymelian translation and control device that enables communication with other beings.

Cosmic Curator

Tivan houses collected civilizations in his Vivarium, where a series of artificial miniature ecosystems duplicate each race’s respective natural environments, complete with extensive flora and fauna. His miniature ecosystems are so detailed that some of his specimens don’t even realize they are living in an artificial environment.

The Collector has extensive contact with Earth, establishing multiple secret museums there, adding many beings and artifacts to his collection. His earliest known Earth museum is a menagerie of giant monsters stored in a subterranean complex beneath Canada. His captives have included Droom, Fin Fang Foom, Gargantus, Goom, Grogg, Groot, Grottu, Rommbu, Taboo, Tragg, Van Doom’s Monster and other gigantic monsters that had terrorized humanity prior to the modern super heroic age. In fact, the proliferation of monstrous menaces during this early period may have been what drew Collector’s attention to modern-day Earth in the first place.

Notable creatures in Tivan’s collection include the Bruruthian Paramecium Rex, which is an unusually large and aggressive single-celled organism. This extremely rare, tentacled entity tried to consume the Collector and his longtime foes, the Avengers, when they entered the Vivarium at reduced size to investigate the Brethren’s escape. Avengers member Quasar (Wendell Vaughn) drove off the creature with a quantum energy blast.

The rare Jupiterian Sauro-Beast is a prize pet held by the Collector, which is a reptilian creature with clawed feet, a tail, and a snake-like neck and head. Slightly larger than a cat and sensitive to noise, it is in fact a large species of insect; one therefore proved susceptible to the insect-controlling powers of the Wasp (Janet Van Dyne), who once compelled the Sauro-Beast to help her and her fellow Avengers escape their cells on the Collector’s ship.

Other creatures in the Collector’s custody include a Venusian Retriever-Anemone, the Vultures of Nepenthe, energy-sapping Venusian Shock-Flies, and the energy creatures of Erdile.

Collector’s Combatants

When the Collector foresaw that the Mad Titan Thanos would destroy the universe, he began collecting artifacts and beings from all races to combat him and preserve the future.

The Avengers, a group of super powered individuals, appealed to the Collector as he hoped to ensnare them. When they fought back, he used gadgets in his collection to escape. All his attempts to add them to his collection have failed thus far.

The Collector once used the Brethren, the fanatically warlike, genocidal superhuman race that the Celestials evolved from bacteria, to ensnare humans. He released them upon Earth to destroy humanity and his plan was to harvest those left—until he was thwarted by the Avengers and the Brethren who ultimately turned on him.

When the Collector uses his daughter Carina to spy on Korvac—a would-be messiah who threatens all existence—Carina unexpectedly falls in love with him. She marries him before turning on her father. Korvac slays the Collector, sending him to Death’s door. Later, Carina and Korvac die in a fight with the Avengers, though Korvac has been reborn in various incarnations since then.

Long-Lived Family

The Elders of the Universe, including the Collector, are an ancient race of extraterrestrials. While they come from different planets and species, he and the other Elders regard each other figuratively as brothers, given the unique kinship they share as the sole survivors of their universe’s earliest civilizations.

The Grandmaster, a fellow Elder and practical brother to the Collector, is obsessed with playing games. Like the Collector, he has amassed an immeasurably massive collection of games. When the Collector died at the hands of Korvac, the Grandmaster sacrifices himself to revive his companion.

Unlike most Elders, the Collector had a family: Matani his wife and Carina his daughter. Though Matani is now deceased, when she was alive, she did not share her husband’s obsession for collecting. And Carina was an ally before she met Korvac.

Archivist’s Account

Temporarily enslaving the super-criminal Beetle (Abe Jenkins) with his obedience potion, the Collector sought the Avengers, abducting the Wasp and luring her Avengers teammates to one of his museums. The Collector succeeded in capturing Captain America, Goliath (Hank Pym in a new identity), Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch, but Goliath freed himself and released his teammates, who soon forced the Beetle and the Collector to flee.

Later, targeting the Avengers again, the Collector recaptured Goliath, Hawkeye, and Wasp, restoring Goliath’s then-lost growing powers to have a flawless set of Avengers. At the same time, the Collector pitted a mind-controlled Thor against Iron Man. However, Goliath, Hawkeye, and Wasp broke free, and the Collector fled again after one of his Robotoids turned against him; Thor then regained his free will and the Collector’s starship exploded.

Resurfacing, the Collector abducted Iron Man’s associate, Happy Hogan, but was opposed by Iron Man, who offered to find a replacement for the new prisoner. The Collector sent Iron Man to steal the Solar Sword from Val-Larr, champion of Luminia. Once he had the sword, the Collector turned on Iron Man, but when the Sword’s power turned against the Collector, he was aided by Iron Man in exchange for giving up both Hogan and the Sword. Iron Man then returned the item to its rightful owner.

Later, infiltrating the Halloween celebrations in Rutland, Vermont, the Collector disguised himself as local man Tom Fagan and lured Avengers members Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Panther into a trap. They were soon freed by their teammates Vision, Scarlet Witch, Swordsman, and Mantis, who were aided by the real Fagan. The Collector was then defeated after Mantis banished his horde of vampire bats.

Establishing a base in the Florida Everglades, the Collector employed a pirate crew taken from a ship in a bottle and briefly enslaved the muck-monsters Man-Thing and Glob (Joe Timms), using them to capture the Hulk. The Hulk soon broke free, liberating many other captives in the process, though the ancient beings rapidly crumbled into dust without the Collector’s devices to sustain them.

By this time, Thanos had finally risen to power and had already been neutralized by other forces, though the Collector had been too preoccupied with his collections to join this conflict. He now foresaw the coming of an even greater threat: the criminal cyborg turned cosmic being Korvac, a would-be messiah whose quest for universal domination threatened all existence. Intervening more directly this time, Collector dispatched his daughter Carina to spy on Korvac, whom she romanced and married, but she soon fell genuinely in love with him.

Meanwhile, seeking to protect his favorite artifacts, the Collector secretly used his time travel technology to aid the Avengers against major menaces. He also began using his teleportation technology to abduct the Avengers one by one, placing them in stasis and hoping to preserve them during the coming universal Armageddon. The Collector subdued all of them except Hawkeye, who defeated the Collector and freed his teammates. By this time, Carina had switched her loyalties from her father to Korvac, who turned the Collector into dust before the Elder could manage to tell the Avengers what he knew.

To win back the Collector’s life, his fellow Elder the Grandmaster challenged Death herself to a Contest of Champions with Earth’s Super Heroes as pawns. The Grandmaster won, but sacrificed his life to resurrect the Collector. Shortly after his resurrection, the Collector acquired the Reality Gem.

The Collector later conspired with the Grandmaster’s spirit to cause the deaths of the Avengers and the Silver Surfer, whose spirits were tricked into battling each other in Death’s realm. As the Elders planned, this distracted Death long enough for the Grandmaster to seize her power. The Avengers and the Surfer soon helped Death reclaim her place, and were restored to life for their assistance. Grandmaster was also restored to life, and he and his fellow Elders (including the Collector) were rendered utterly incapable of dying since Death did not want to risk close contact with them again. Meanwhile, Collector’s wife Matani was restored to life because of Grandmaster’s brief power over death, but she still lacked the will to live and died again moments after her return.

Around this time, the Collector and his fellow Elders conspired to destroy and supplant the cosmic being Galactus by using the Infinity Gems, an act which would remake the universe in the process. Their plot failed, thanks in part to opposition from the Silver Surfer and Mantis, and Galactus vengefully consumed several Elders, including the Collector. The devoured Elders were soon restored by Lord Chaos and Master Order, who later fled after helping Galactus and others defeat the rogue In-Betweener.

Later, a resurrected Thanos sought the Gems and began taking them from the Elders, such as the Runner, whom Thanos reduced to an infant. Thanos then traded the infant Runner to the Collector (who was intrigued by the notion of having a fellow Elder in his collection) in exchange for the Collector’s Reality Gem, but the Runner soon regained his normal form and freed himself, viciously beating the Collector in the process.

Among the beings imprisoned in miniature size on the Collector’s starship were the Brethren, a fanatically warlike, genocidal superhuman race that the Celestials had evolved from bacteria. The Collector released them near Earth, hoping the Brethren would wipe out most of humanity and that he could harvest what was left of the population as a rare collector’s item. His scheme was thwarted by the Avengers though, and he was seemingly destroyed when the Brethren turned on him.

Surviving, the Collector sent his mercenary Collection Agency to retrieve an insanity-inducing virus, manipulating Silver Surfer into joining the hunt as well. But in the end, the Surfer destroyed the virus, the Agency cut ties with the Collector after losing one of their own to the virus, and the Collector was left to face an angry Surfer.

Targeting the Avengers again, the Collector formed an alliance with Galen Kor’s Kree military fanatics, but Kor failed to deliver the Avengers before the Collector ended their association. The Collector next sought to steal an egg produced by the Skrull warrior Lyja, believing it to be the unique hybrid Skrull-human offspring of Lyja and the Human Torch (Johnny Storm), but he relented after realizing the egg was a fake.

The Collector suffered a much worse setback when the security of an artificial planetoid he had created as a haven for endangered sentient species was compromised by the misguided adventurers Aria and Wolverine, resulting in the planetoid’s consumption by Galactus.

When rival monster the Mole Man attacked Collector’s underground museum in Canada, the imprisoned monsters there escaped and went on a rampage in the world above. Many of them were subsequently exiled to the Negative Zone via the combined efforts of the Thing, the Hulk, Beast, and Giant-Man (Hank Pym), though several monsters escaped that prison as well, and some eventually entered the Mole Man’s service. Perhaps impressed by the heroes who captured the monsters, the Collector began to focus on collecting Earthly super beings in general—and the Avengers in particular.

Despite such disappointments, the Collector continued to pursue his mission, battling his brother the Grandmaster in a Contest of Champions over an ancient cosmic artifact known as the Iso-Sphere before futilely trying to bypass the worthy enchantment on Thor’s hammer.