Eddie and his Other (the symbiote , who has no name in the comics, 'Venom' exclusively being the name of their fused form) have been in a romantic relationship since the very first days of their characters in the late 80s with them referring to their bond as 'marriage' and 'a long, fulfilling relationship', along with Eddie in later comics using pet names like 'my love', and 'my darling'. They also have 7 children , spawned agametically. My point being that they are a canon queer couple and have been since their very first appearances.
However, queerphobic fans and, a depressingly high number of queerphobic writers, like to pretend that the relationship doesn't exist and the most recent writer (Cates), went as far as to retcon and rewrite all 30 years of Venom comics specifically to frame the symbiote as an abusive predator who never loved Eddie and whom Eddie only was with because he was too weak to be alone. ie: absolute trash garbage that is a disgrace to Venom comics and comics as a whole. At the same time he claimed it was abusive, he also claimed the relationship never happened to begin with.
Needless to say, many fans, including myself, were very upset by this, along with the writer's active hostility towards fans, going as far as to make a tumblr account just to find people criticising the comics and mock them on his Twitter (no I'm not making this up I wish I were). So I was salty.
But! Smack dab in the middle of that run, a non sequitur, flash back comic called 'Marvel Presents #5' (the one shown above) was published. For background, during the events of 'Venom: The Hunger(1996)',a fan favorite mini arc, it's revealed that the symbiote needs a chemical found in human brains, phenylethylamine, to survive. Long story short, it goes crazy without it and Eddie has to save it. Phenylethylamine is a chemical produced by your brain when you're in love, which Eddie states explicitly, so the symbiote is literally fueled by Eddie's feelings of love towards it, and also chocolate which contains a lot of PEA. It ends with Eddie buying his Other a big Valentine's day heart.
In marvel presents #5, apparently they have somehow run low on PEA again and the symbiote is trying to convince Eddie to get a quick fix of it by getting laid (which also releases a lot of PEA). It keeps suggesting different people but Eddie keeps refusing. Finally the symbiote goes into Eddie's mind to find out what Eddie would want and finds out it's the symbiote itself. Eddie agrees to have sex with the symbiote and it cuts to black as Eddie warns it to 'watch the teeth'.
Now, the comic was sadly very out of character for both Eddie and his Other. The other is usually very timid and I firmly hold the opinion that Eddie would much more likely lovingly top the symbiote on a bed covered in rose petals and chocolate he spent at least an hour carefully crafting the atmosphere for while reciting love poetry to it with many layers of religious symbolism.
But nonetheless it did make it absolutely and unquestionably Canon that their relationship is not only romantic but sexual. Which of course pissed off aforementioned terrible writer and terrible comic bros to no end. So if course I was elated. And made this shirt in a beautiful, salty, spiteful joy.
Like, you can try your best, comic jackasses, but Eddie and his Other HAVE FUCKED and there's literally nothing you can do to change the fact that that is a real comic that was published by Marvel Comics and is canon.
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