The Marvel Comic Book Universe houses a lot of horrifying entities. From Amatsu Mikaboshi to Cul Borson and the Dark Winter, there are so many cosmic level threats Marvel has to offer. But none of them hold even a candle to the horrifying might of the Cancerverse, a terrible parallel universe which had come the closest ever to defeating the Avengers for good.
And from what we have seen in the MCU so far, Marvel might be hinting at the onset of the Cancerverse into mainstream MCU.
The Cancerverse was first mentioned in in the 2010 story arc – Realm Of Kings. When Black Bolt, King of the Inhumans, and Vulcan, Emperor of the Shi’ar Empire, fought so much it tore the very space-time continuum. The rift in space time came to be known as the Fault. It was more of a portal, at the other end of which was a grim and dark parallel universe that is the stuff nightmares are made out of.
What Makes The Cancerverse So Deadly?
The Cancerverse was one just like the mainstream Marvel universe. It was a perfect mirror image. But when Mar-Vell of that world realized he had cancer, he sought any help he could get to get rid of the disease inside his body. In the end, a broken and distraught Mar-Vell was approached by the Many-Angled Ones, dark beings that thrived in a void called the Space Between Realities. These entities bestowed upon Mar-Vell the power to kill death. Mar-Vell on the other hand corrupted the rest of the Avengers to fight alongside him.
Lady Death was killed when she came for Mar-Vell. But the victory came at a terrible cost. With death no longer having any meaning in this universe, the reality turned into a living nightmare. The Many-Angled Ones then invaded this now corrupted world and now the Eldritch Gods rule all over creation in this realm of existence.
Many elements from the Cancerverse’s original story arc already exist in the MCU. Project PEGASUS, in the comic books, is the name of the operation aimed at studying the Fault, the portal to the Multiverse. In the MCU, the same project exists but its aim is to study the Tesseract, which is in itself a way to traverse the space-time continuum. That project was led by Wendy Lawson, the MCU’s Mar-Vell, who just so happens to be a crucial character in the Cancerverse saga.
To top it off, the base of operations of Project PEGASUS was Knowhere, the decapitated head of a Celestial that also exists in the MCU as seen in GOTG Volume 1.
Irony is that in the comics, Thanos helped defeat the Cancerverse. Since he is no longer alive in the MCU, we wonder which hero would take the reins.
Maybe Adam Warlock or Richard Rider?
