Captain Bio: Are You at Risk for Hepatitis B? and Captain Bio: Attack of the Hep B Virus!

by Matt Peters

In the 1990s, pharmaceutical giant Merck partnered with marketing firm Tim Peters and Company to launch a line of comic books called Bio Comics. The flagship character of that line was Captain Bio, a superhero whose advanced technology gives him unique abilities to fight pathogens and other microscopic threats to human health. The comic books served as free patient education materials that were distributed in hospitals and other healthcare settings. The comics weren’t explicit pitches for Merck products but aligned Merck’s brand with important healthcare needs.

Two of the comics that came out of the project were Captain Bio: Are You at Risk for Hepatitis B? (1994) and Captain Bio: Attack of the Hep B Virus! (1997). Both are short, eight-page comics that tell Captain Bio’s origin story on the inside front cover. Captain Bio is the superhero identity of Mark Phillips, a physician whose wife died from a rare disease. Motivated by his loss to find solutions to vexing medical problems, Dr. Phillips immersed himself in a home-based laboratory, where he created a pair of diagnostic visors he called his Bio-Meter.

What began as an innovative piece of medical technology was transformed when Dr. Phillips’ house was struck by lightning. The electrical surge turned the Bio-Meter into a powerful device that could turn Dr. Phillips into Captain Bio, a superhero with the power to shrink to microscopic size, fly through air and human body tissues, and shroud himself in a protective energy field—powers that he could use to enter his patients’ bodies and quickly diagnose their ailments. Along with those powers, Captain Bio has a sleek body suit, featuring gold leggings and wrist gauntlets over a blue and white base layer. Conveniently, Dr. Phillips can simply remove the Bio-Meter when he wants to interact with patients as an ordinary and inconspicuous physician—and then transform back into Captain Bio at any time by putting the Bio-Meter back on.

In Captain Bio: Are You at Risk for Hepatitis B?, Dr. Phillips sees a teen named Scott who is complaining of exhaustion. Earlier in the day, Scott collapsed with fatigue while skating with some friends. Dr. Phillips notices that Scott’s eyes look yellow. Suspecting that Scott might be jaundiced with hepatitis, Dr. Phillips steps out of the examination room and retreats to his nearby office, where he dons his Bio-Meter and turns into Captain Bio. Captain Bio then shrinks to microscopic size and flies back into the examination room to enter Scott’s torso and take a look at what’s happening. Once inside, Captain Bio heads to Scott’s liver and gets visual confirmation of an active hepatitis infection. With that knowledge, Captain Bio exits Scott’s torso, returns to the office, and removes the Bio-Meter to transform back into Dr. Phillips.

When Dr. Phillips gives Scott the diagnosis, Scott gives a shocked reaction. Dr. Phillips subsequently explains that hepatitis B can be contracted in a number of different ways, including “unprotected sex with multiple partners” and “contact with someone else’s blood—while undergoing transfusions, tattoos or ear piercings” (page 7, panel 6). Scott admits that he has had a lot of girlfriends, so Dr. Phillips advises him to let them know of their potential exposure. Dr. Phillips concludes the consultation by telling Scott that he will need to come back for “regular blood checks and exams” to monitor the progress of his recovery (page 8, panel 4).

Captain Bio’s next hepatitis-themed comic, Captain Bio: Attack of the Hep B Virus!, is not a sequel to the earlier comic but a standalone story—albeit one with virtually the same story structure. This time, Dr. Phillips sees a young adult named Kevin who recently got a tattoo. Months later, Kevin started feeling sick during a game of beach volleyball. While examining Kevin, Dr. Phillips steps into his office to transform into Captain Bio so that he can enter Kevin’s torso and perform a liver inspection. This time, one of the hepatitis virus particles is anthropomorphized, able to express its hostility with both speech and body language.

Dr. Phillips’ consultation with Kevin goes much like the earlier one with Scott. Dr. Phillips delivers the diagnosis and explains the ways Kevin might have contracted hepatitis B. Kevin realizes his recent tattoo was the likely source of his exposure, and he and Dr. Phillips discuss a plan for follow-up visits to monitor Kevin’s recovery.[1]

A supporting character that appears in both comics is Surge, who’s described as “a computer-generated sidekick” in Captain Bio’s origin story (inside front cover, panel 5, both comics). Surge is a monochromatic gold character, microscopic in size, with his hair in a long, messy quiff. Surge’s lower body morphs into a long, ribbon-like flight trail. He flies alongside Captain Bio wherever he goes, activated by Captain Bio’s Bio-Meter. If the character were introduced today, Surge would probably be described as artificial intelligence, but that term is never used in these two comics. Surge seems to serve no other purpose than to provide interaction and dialogue when Captain Bio is in his microscopic form—too small to engage with other people. For a simpler narrative device, the creators could have used internal dialogue, via thought bubbles, instead of character-to-character dialogue. However, including Surge does add some visual flourishes to many panels, giving some of the comics’ pages a more dynamic look.

Both comics do an effective job of explaining the basics of hepatitis B. Through Dr. Phillips’ dialogue, the comics explain that hepatitis B is a vaccine-preventable disease—but one that continues to spread because of low adherence to vaccine recommendations. In the first comic, Dr. Phillips provides some additional information about the risks of cirrhosis and liver cancer that a hepatitis B infection can introduce, and in the second comic he shares some additional information about the virus’s environmental stability (its ability to survive outside of a host). “Hepatitis B can live for several days on contaminated objects and be more contagious than the HIV virus,” he tells Kevin (page 8, panel 3). Both comics contain summary information on their back covers that provide further details about the disease’s symptoms, infection rates, and preventability.[2]

One detail of these comics that might raise questions today is the motivating event in Captain Bio’s origin story. The physician turned superhero developed his Bio-Meter in response to his wife’s death, and his wife played no other role in the story outside of that plot device. Feminist critics of the comic book medium have noted that this is a common pattern. A female character like Dr. Phillips’ wife is often introduced so that she can experience a tragic event that motivates a male character’s actions. To elaborate, the female character’s death or affliction will advance the male character’s development, prompting him to become a vigilante or take some other dramatic turn, thereby contributing to a common disparity in which female characters are given less power and agency in narratives than their male counterparts. In 1999, comic book critic (and later comic book writer) Gail Simone began to document and deconstruct this phenomenon on her website Women in Refrigerators. The website was so influential that the term fridging is now a common colloquial expression for the sexist trope Simone identified.[3]

Aside from the questionable creative choice in Captain Bio’s origin story, the character’s habit of turning microscopic and entering unsuspecting patients is a practice that in real life, were such a feat possible, would go against the grain of informed consent.[4] As long as readers know what to take literally and what to take as artistic license, Captain Bio’s invasive and secretive inspections can be shrugged off as harmless entertainment.

Both of Captain Bio’s hepatitis-themed comics are long out of print, but they can still be found at some used comic book retailers, including some on eBay. In addition, the library at Florida International University has a digitized copy of the second comic, Captain Bio: Attack of the Hep B Virus!, which is available online. Digitized copies of two other comics from the Bio Comics line are also available online. Oak Ridge Associated Universities hosts a copy of Captain Bio Encounters a Brainstorm (1994), a comic about epilepsy, and the library at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln hosts a copy of Captain Bio: Clearing the Air! (1996), a comic about asthma.

A paucity of information is still around today about the history of the Bio Comics project. From the little that can be gleaned from the internet, the project appears to have been abandoned after the 1990s. For what it’s worth, the website TrademarkElite.com shows that Tim Peters and Company still holds a trademark on Captain Bio. If the company ever makes use of that trademark again, hopefully Captain Bio will get a new, more feminist-informed origin story—and perhaps the fine print in the indicia can include a disclaimer about the character’s strange disregard for informed consent.

Notes

[1] Neither of the two comics discussed treatment options, presumably because hepatitis antivirals were an emerging pharmaceutical technology at the time. The Food and Drug Administration approved Intron A in 1991 but only as a treatment for chronic hepatitis B and C (an infection that does not resolve after six months). A newer drug, entecavir, was approved for chronic hepatitis B in 2005, and within a few years it was recommended as a first-line treatment for acute hepatitis B. Current information on treatment options for hepatitis B (as well as C and other strains of hepatitis) is available on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. Why Dr, Phillips didn’t treat Scott’s or Kevin’s symptoms is never explained.

[2] One subject the comics do not cover is the differences between hepatitis A, B, C, and D. Presumably these comics focused solely on hepatitis B due to its prevalence compared to the other types and the vaccines available for it. Readers who are interested in learning more about the various types of hepatitis can check out “Hepatitis ABC’s” on HepVu.org. On the “ABC’s” webpage, readers will find information on infection rates, transmission vectors, incubation rates, and other key facts for each type of hepatitis. HepVu.org is a website dedicated to disseminating information about hepatitis, with particular focus on its prevention and treatment in the United States. It’s a project of Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health in partnership with Gilead Sciences, Inc., and it contains a wealth of information to browse in easy-to-understand formats.

[3] Most of the dialogue on fridging has focused on female characters who have been victimized in some way, with particular attention to victims of assault and homicide—likely because those are the most egregious and shocking examples of fridging. However, it’s worth noting that Simone’s original definition included fates such as “contract[ing] a disease” and “other life-derailing tragedies.”

[4] It may be worth adding that this unconventional diagnostic process would likewise conflict with a real-world understanding of regulated, peer-reviewed clinical practice.

Matt Peters is a program manager at Health Sciences Design, an interdisciplinary health innovation program at the University of Arizona Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. He is also a longtime comic book reader and collector who can be found from time to time at his local comic book shops. Views expressed are his own.