TOT: Thing & Spidey Sitting in a Tree

Remember that one time Spider-Man and The Thing totally made out?

Spider-Man has made friends with almost major hero in the Marvel Universe. He and Wolverine had a miniseries, he and Deadpool have a book, he's been an Avenger and worked for Tony Stark, he's gotten help from the likes of Doctor Strange and Daredevil and once pulled the Carnage symbiot off of The Silver Surfer, but more than most characters Spider-Man is good friends with The Fantastic Four. Reed, Susan, Johnny and Ben are some of the best friends Spider-Man has, they're like another family to him. Why, while Peter Parker had to do the whole teenage hero thing on his own, his good pal Johnny got to be the teenage hero on the most fantastic family in the universe. And Ben, well, let's just say he's the second best Ben that Peter has even known.

Which makes today's post either sweeter or grosser. In "The Avenging Spider-Man Annual #1" Rob Williams (no not that one) wrote a team-up between Spider-Man and The Thing. Oh goodie, two of my favorite characters! And this was a good era for Spidey, he was an Avenger, part of Mr. Fantastic's Future Foundation, had a costume that could take on different color pallets like it was a video game or something. Well, in this issue Peter and Ben are babysitting Franklin and Valeria Richards for Reed and Sue and the kids got into the lab and found some alien device. Upon playing with it the box affected their emotions and turned the kids evil, they went out and used to box to torment people and steal from them. When Spider-Man and The Thing went to stop them, they accidently switched the device and made everyone in the vicinity fall in love with each other. Spidey and The Thing then started making out uncontrollably. The kids realize what's happened and ask The Thing to smash the device rendering everyone back to normal and Ben and Peter agree to never mention this. Ever.

This is one of those flash-in-the-pan, blink-and-you'll-miss it kind of stories that would have broke the internet if it was written now. Nowadays people talk up and down about how Wolverine is bisexual because he shared a kiss with Hercules once even though that was a request by Herc in return for Logan's assistance. Then when Andrew Garfield mentioned how he wouldn't mind a version of Peter Parker who was gay people flipped. Even now there is a petition for Wonder Woman to be made a bisexual in the next film. Granted she is in the comics, but it's such a small thing to her character. Superman has a red cape, Batman is rich, and Wonder Woman has fooled around with women. I find it so pandering and so annoying when these small, quickly forgotten moments of homosexualality are exploited just to make people feel like they are being represented. That's what characters like Northstar, Batwoman, and Wiccan are for! Pasting labels-whether they be racial or sexual-onto already existing characters with established races and sexualities is just lazy and desperate. All that aside, this was a hilarious moment and I hope for their sake The Human Torch never finds out about this. Ever.

Thanks for reading.