Collective Man

Introduced in Marvel Comics, Collective Man first appeared in The Incredible Hulk vol. 2 #250 (Aug. 1980). In the fiction the five Tao-Yu brothers are Chinese quintuplets (Sun, Chang, Ho, Lin, and Han Tao-Yu) who manifested mutant abilities; they were taken into government custody and trained to serve as state agents. Across subsequent storylines they function within national and international superhero contexts, entering contests and conflicts that expand and alter their capabilities and political alignments.

Unmerged, the Collective Man are five Chinese brothers described as quintuplet farmers who are physically peak-human and practiced in martial arts. When merged they present as a single superhuman physical form. Depictions vary: the merged body is usually a single enhanced human-sized operative, but in storylines they have appeared enlarged to giant proportions after mystical alteration and have, on at least one occasion, expanded via assimilated duplicates into continent-scale giant forms.

Core, consistently attested abilities include fusion (the five brothers can merge into one body; fewer than five may merge) and a psychic/spiritual link that permits telepathic communication and teleportation to one another. Variable or later-added capabilities, described in particular storylines, include generating duplicate bodies, converting others into obedient Collective Man clones who can fuse with the prime form, large-scale assimilation (depicted as capable in one storyline of converting very large populations to produce continent-spanning size at great strain), and size alteration after mystical alteration by other characters. Individually the brothers are depicted as peak-human martial artists. The scale and limits of these powers fluctuate across issues and arcs.