The Cancer Plot: Terminal Immortality in Marvel’s Moral Universe

In The Cancer Plot, Reginald Wiebe and Dorothy Woodman examine the striking presence of cancer in Marvel comics. Engaging comics studies, medical humanities, and graphic medicine, they explore this disease in four case studies: Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, Thor, and Deadpool. Cancer, the authors argue, troubles the binaries of good and evil because it is the ultimate nemesis within a genre replete with magic, mutants, and multiverses. They draw from gender theory, disability studies, and cultural theory to demonstrate how cancer in comics enables an examination of power and responsibility, key terms in Marvel’s superhero universe. As the only full-length study on cancer in the Marvel universe, The Cancer Plot is an appealing and original work that will be of interest to scholars across the humanities, particularly those working in the health humanities, cultural theory, and literature, as well as avid comics readers.

Reginald Wiebe is Associate Professor of English at Concordia University of Edmonton and gratefully lives on Treaty 6 territory. Dorothy Woodman is an Associate Lecturer at the University of Alberta and gratefully lives on Treaty 6 territory.