This week’s issue of Thor will reveal her secret identity (as will this article)

A long-time colleague of Thor’s original secret identity Dr. Donald Blake, Foster first appeared in 1962 as a nurse working alongside the superhero surgeon, before someone reminded Stan Lee and company in the late ’90s that women could be doctors, too. As with most comic book characters active since the ’60s, Foster has a long and complicated backstory, including time travel, villains like “Thug Thatcher” and “Zaniac,” and an increasing sense of weariness from anyone trying to make it all make sense. The salient facts, though, are these: Foster is a former love interest of Thor’s, she has breast cancer, and apparently her activities as the superheroine are making her condition worse.

It remains to be seen where Foster and her condition will fit in with Marvel’s long tradition of using its superheroes as metaphors for various social groups and issues. (Spider-Man for teenage angst, for example, or the X-Men for racial minorities, or the X-Men for gay people, or the X-Men for people who look like they’re drawn by Rob Liefeld.) It’s not clear what Foster’s condition can stand in for, besides the obvious social ill of battling supervillains while dying of cancer. It does seem, though, from the leaked image above, that fighting against both her enemies and her disease has left Foster feeling like she’s a little Thor.