I’ve been a devoted reader of superhero comics since I was bequeathed a battered pile of comics (along with a giant felt-covered Denver Broncos cowboy hat. The love of superheroes stuck; I’m ambivalent about the Broncos). In that pile was Superboy #195, a comic I can still recite from memory decades later. The combination of clever plotting, visual storytelling, and fantastical escapism hooked me immediately. While building an academic career as a university professor, I held on to this “secret origin” and never stopped wondering what made superhero stories tick.
I wrote
The Cancer Plot: Terminal Immortality in Marvel's Moral Universe
I’m recommending this book because it grapples with death from illness in a way most superhero comics will not.
This collection features a key story in the long-running X-Men subplot about the Legacy Virus, a science fiction analog to HIV/AIDS (a time-traveling supervillain’s evil scheme, not a storyline one would want to attempt with a real-world virus).
Superhero stories tend to rely on a type of moral causality, but viruses do not discriminate between heroes and villains. Junior X-Men member Jubilee must confront the unfairness of a fatal condition in a world where death is usually a plot contrivance to be overcome. It’s a moving and thoughtful pause in the action, setting stakes that feel paradoxically far more significant than globe-trotting adventures.
Magneto tears Wolverine's world apart! As the terrifying Legacy virus spreads among mutantkind, the X-Men suffer a truly heartbreaking loss. Then, when the messianic madman Magneto returns, offering mutantkind safe haven aboard his asteroid home, which longtime X-Man will join his Acolytes - and why? Secrets of Magneto's life are finally revealed as the villain's threat to humanity grows - but when the X-Men face him in a final showdown, both Magneto and Professor X will do the unthinkable! Plus: The Upstarts target Forge! A techno-organic threat rises! Gambit takes center stage in a solo tale that sheds new light…
This book contains a rare examination of HIV/AIDS in superhero comics. It’s much more likely a superhero story will deal with HIV/AIDS allegorically (see the recommendation above!) than directly.
Given the Hulk’s own fears about his blood contaminating his loved ones (his cousin Jennifer Walters became the She-Hulk after a transfusion of his blood), he is uniquely sympathetic to the illness of a friend who contracts HIV. As longtime Hulk writer David advances subplots (at this point, Bruce Banner and the Hulk have merged into a more-or-less well-adjusted form of the famous giant green rage monster), he builds space to linger on character details.
David himself has struggled with health issues in recent years, and this comic is also a reminder of one of the genre’s great writers.
Hulk goes to Hel and back! First, Hulk and the Pantheon face a painful - and all-too-human - loss. But Hela herself soon claims the Hulk in an Asgardian underworld epic! Then, it's the end of an era as the Pantheon is torn apart from within! Agamemnon stands trial, one among them falls and the Hulk's rage transforms him into a savage…Bruce Banner?! While Doc Samson strives to save Bruce's mind, Betty battles for her life - and the stage is set for a new status quo. In hiding and struggling to remain calm, the Hulk takes on Man-Thing, the…
Deadpool is superhero comics', and perhaps literature in general’s,
most consistently challenging fictional engagement with cancer.
Deadpool’s healing factor prevents his cancer from ever being cured,
which traps him in a never-ending cycle of remission and relapse.
Unlike a superhero who responds to a bodily transformation by
self-sacrificingly upholding the status quo, Deadpool is a mercenary and
anti-hero. In this collection, writer Joe Kelly creates much of the
narrative infrastructure that eventually made the character one of
Marvel’s most popular.
Kelly also crafts a story where Deadpool is offered a heroic transformation that—through personal weakness, history, bad luck, and supervillainous interference—tragically fails. This book establishes the template for Deadpool stories and digs into Deadpool’s cancer for the first time.
I’m recommending this book for how delightfully it considers the ill
human body as a site of new possibilities. The Doom Patrol have never
been well-known superheroes, perhaps because of the willingness of
writers to confront the bodily trauma at the heart of their stories.
Morrison’s
contribution to the series was to consider the Doom Patrol truly as
freaks: people who could not fit into a society that demands gender,
mental, and physical homogeneity. Mixing allegorical forms of illness—Cliff “Robotman” Steele’s fallible technological body—with more direct conditions like Kaye “Crazy Jane” Callis’ dissociative identity disorder.
Morrison,
along with artistic collaborators, built a celebration of difference
into a genre where most heroic bodies never break the mold.
The new Doom Patrol puts itself back together after nearly being destroyed,
and things start to get a lot weirder for everybody. The Chief leads Robotman,
the recently formed Rebis, and new member Crazy Jane against the Scissormen,
part of a dangerous, philosophical location that has escaped into our world and
is threatening to engulf reality itself. Collecting Grant Morrison's definitive
run, which launched his career as one of the comic industry's most innovative
and creative writers!
Collects Doom Patrol #19-63 and Doom Force Special
#1.
This book has one of the most fun depictions of heart disease you’ll read. Wait! Don’t leave! That came out wrong!
Superhero comics rarely consider the toll of an intensely physical role. In this continuation of the landmark superhero series, Blue Beetle struggles with his sense of self-worth when he puts on weight and discovers that he has heart disease. The character’s role in the long-running series had mostly been comic relief, and this storyline gave the character some greater nuance and shading.
As a less-popular character, Blue Beetle can consider retirement without the guarantee that writers will have him miraculously discover the cure to a lifelong condition. While cracking jokes about himself in spandex to cover up his own insecurity, this comic takes time to consider aging, chronic conditions, and the way friends react to a life-changing diagnosis.
The satirical 1980s Justice League adventures are collected in a single hardcover edition for the first time. A new hardcover collecting the classic JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL tales from the late 1980s! Batman, Green Lantern, Booster Gold and the other quirky heroes of JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL are back! Can an unlikely new Justice League line-up work as a unit to stop terrorists at the U.N., a brigade of Rocket Reds, the Royal Flush Gang, and other threats - or will they succumb to in-fighting and bad jokes?
It focuses on Marvel superheroes who have had cancer. Though not a death sentence, a cancer diagnosis is a deeply impactful change for a patient who must consider their body in a new light. Superhero stories, particularly Marvel’s, are built on physical transformations given moral dimension: heroes choose to use their newfound abilities to preserve the status quo, while villains seek to change (often hoping to rule!) the world.
Given our common cultural language around heroic “battles” with cancer, the moral framework between these two distinct encounters with a radically altered body are remarkably similar. The Cancer Plot examines four case studies (Captain Marvel, Spider-Man/Venom, Thor, and Deadpool) to consider what’s at stake when superheroes “battle” cancer.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
