the time-machine set on year 1978 TIME MACHINE

Classification: Extraterrestrial technology (time travel)

Creator: Unrevealed

Possessors: The Collector (Taneleer Tivan)

Users: Carina, Thor, the Collector (likely), possible many other Avengers (see comments)

Location: Sub-space, Collector's base, Collector's Museum, with access from a location beyond the stratosphere of planet Earth

First Appearance: Avengers I#175 (September, 1978)

Powers/Abilities/Functions: The Collector's Time Machine could transport a creature from the present time to the past, and from the past time to the present. The past time could be more than one hundred years.

    The machine could transport objects, too, at least the objects worn or close to the body of the traveler. Apparently the target and the destination times did not belong to diverging or alternate realities.

    The machine had tapes that recorded its functions, making it possible to know how the machine had been used in the past.

History: (Avengers I#175 (fb) - BTS) - Its origins unrevealed, the time machine was only one of the powerful, useful devices that the Collector had in his hidden base in sub-space.

    The time machine helped the Collector's in his scheme to avoid a cosmic war between "the Enemy" (Korvac) and other cosmic beings.

Carina time-sent to Earth(Avengers I#175 (fb) - BTS) - The time machine was used on Thor, the God of Thunder, several times. The Collector chose the Mighty Thor as the best safety measure to protect the Avengers. The Collector wanted to collect all the Avengers to use them against Korvac.

(Avengers I#159 - BTS / 175 (fb) - BTS) - The Collector time-ported Thor from elsewhere to the Avengers' Mansion, to help the Avengers that were Graviton's prisoners.

(Avengers I#167 (fb) - BTS) - After Graviton was vanquished, Thor disappeared, time-ported by the machine.

(Avengers I#161 / 162 - BTS / 175 (fb) - BTS) - Captain America sent a broadcast radio message for some Avengers, but the transmission could not reach Asgard, where the Thunder God was.
    Shortly later, when Ultron apparently killed four Avengers, the Collector seized Thor with the Time Machine and sent him to help the Avengers against Ultron.

(Avengers I#167 (fb) - BTS) - After Ultron fled, Thor disappeared, again transported by the time machine.

(Avengers I#165 - BTS / 166 (fb) - BTS / 175 (fb) - BTS) - The time machine was used to kidnap Thor again, light-years away from Earth. Thor's memory of the time-transport was wiped out and he was sent to Manhattan to save the Avengers defeated by Count Nefaria. This time, Thor wasn't time-ported elsewhere thereafter.

(before or during Avengers I#167 - BTS / 175 (fb) - BTS) - The Collector used the time-machine to send his daughter, Carina, to planet Earth, at the time when Korvac hid there under the alias of "Michael."

(Avengers I#167) - Simon Williams wondered with Thor, if the god had guessed the cause of his mysterious disappearances, but Thor could only suppose that it was sorcery.

(Avengers I#170 - BTS / 175 (fb) - BTS) - Again, the machine seized Thor from the Avengers' mansion to make him appear outside the mansion. Without memory of where he was moments before, believing he had come back from a long absence, Thor saw a mechanical female he didn't recognize, menacing his companions. Thor's dampened memory didn't let him remember Jocasta, whom he had seen during his previous battle with Ultron (Avengers I#167).

(Avengers I#173 - BTS / 175 (fb) - BTS) - The Collector used the machine to kidnap Thor again. Shortly after, Thor was sent back to the Avengers' Mansion when almost all the Avengers had already been captured by the Collector. There, he met Wonder Man, whom he didn't have any memory about, despite the two had fought together several times in the last days.

(Avengers I#175) - After the Collector had been disintegrated in his sub-spatial base by Korvac, Iron Man studied the machinery collected there, and he found the time machine. The machine had been previously set to the current year (see comments) by the Collector. Iron Man also found its function playback tapes, learning that one of the targets of the machine had been Thor. The tapes revealed to Iron Man why Thor disappeared after some menaces were defeated, why he re-appeared in some critical moments of need, and revealed that sometime Thor's memories had been cancelled before sending him back.

    Two-Gun Kid saw the time machine as a good chance to go back home to his time in the year 1873.
    The Kid entered into the transparent tube, and Iron Man sent him back to the past.

Comments: Created by Jim Shooter, David Michelinie and Dave Wenzel.

    The sub-space base, and the time machine were abandoned by the Avengers a short time after they time-ported Two-Gun Kid. The base location was used by Vance Astro to teleport the Avengers there, so it was likely stored in the databases of the Drydock system and of the Avengers' computers.

    The time machine was probably used in combination with the Cosmic Viewer, either to find Thor in the time-stream and/or location and/or dimension, or to previously watch the right place where to send Thor when/where he should have been useful. Other combinations:

  1. It is likely that the time machine was the tool used by the Collector to kidnap the other Avengers. Also, the Avengers were stored in transparent cylinders, similar to the cylinder of the time machine.
  2. There isn't the total certainty about this likeliness, because the sub-spatial Collector's base included also a teleporting device.
  3. It is also possible that the teleporting device was a component of the time machine, the part that worked on the spatial coordinates, while the time machine worked on the time coordinates.

    The cases (1) and (3) would imply that the time machine was used behind-the-scenes also in Avengers I#168,172,174.

the avengers kidnapped by the time-machine teletransport

    The presence of a time machine among the Collector's paraphernalia opens hypotheses about actually *when* he acquired the pieces of his Collection. The Collector is an Elder of the Universe, so the first possibility is that he took the pieces going where they were, moving exclusively on the spatial coordinates, even in a past of billion of years ago, given his age. With a Time Machine he could have grabbed any object or creature in a different moment, going back (and forward ?) along the time coordinates.

    In order to reduce paradoxes when time-porting beings and objects into the same timeline, it would be a logical solution to equip a time machine with a device that erases the memory of the time traveler. Any knowledge of the future couldn't influence the past. An eventual meeting with oneself of the time past could be explainable.

Profile by Spidermay.

CLARIFICATIONS:
The Collector's time machine, that could transport being to and from the sub-space accessible from a ten-cube feet space, seems very similar to, and probably connected to:

the same time machine should be distinguished from:

images: (without ads):
Avengers I#175, pg. 3, panel 2 (the machine set on year 1978);
        pg. 8, panel 3 (the Collector using the machine to send Carina to Earth)
Avengers I#173, pg. 13, panel 5 / pg.14, panel 1 (Black Panther and Yellowjacket kidnapped, by the tele-transport device or by the time machine?)

Appearances:
Avengers I#175 (September, 1978) - Jim Shooter (plot), David Michelinie (script), Dave Wenzel (pencils), Pablo Marcos (inks), Phil Rachelson (colors), Roger Stern (editor)

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

First posted: 03/26/2026
Last updated: 03/26/2026

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