The Untold Truth Of Flash Thompson

More than any other superhero, Spider-Man is known for having a truly incredible supporting cast. It's not just the villains, it's the ordinary people who surround Peter Parker. Love interests like Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy, comedic foils like the over-the-top blowhard that is J. Jonah Jameson, and even friends-turned-enemies-turned-friends-again like Harry Osborn are all part of the fabric that make the story of Spider-Man what it is. There is, however, one member of Spidey's entourage that goes back further than any of the others.

Before Mary Jane, before Jonah Jameson, and even before Aunt May and Uncle Ben, there was Eugene "Flash" Thompson. He's the single oldest supporting character in the Spider-Man saga, and as you might expect, that gives him a pretty complicated history, even by Spidey standards. From bully to best friend, from war hero to cosmic avenger, from page to screen, here's the truth about Flash Thompson.

The thing that made Spider-Man such a revolutionary character, and contributed to his immediate appeal with audiences, was that his personal life was inextricably tied to his superheroic adventures. It wasn't just a matter of, say, Lois Lane being kidnapped and needing to be rescued in the pages of Superman, it was that the things he did as Spider-Man had a direct impact on Peter Parker's life, and the problems he had as Peter informed his actions as a super-hero, too.

Along with Norman Osborn — the father of Peter's best friend who would turn out to be one of his greatest enemies — Flash Thompson is one of the best examples of how all this works. In the early days, he was portrayed as Midtown High's resident bully, the guy who saw Peter Parker as an easy target and tormented him for the amusement of his peers. It's a standard trope, but what makes it interesting is that before Peter got his spider-powers, he wasn't strong enough to stand up to Flash's bullying — and once he did have them, he was way too strong.

If you've ever read a Spider-Man comic, you've probably encountered his classic maxim about power and responsibility, and Flash is the perfect illustration of that. Both Peter Parker and the fans reading his comics know that a guy who can bench press a car could shut Flash up almost effortlessly, but Peter already knows what happens when he uses his powers for personal gain. Instead, he puts on the mask, and takes all that frustration out on Doctor Octopus... which may or may not be that healthy.

Despite Peter's initial reluctance to use his incredible strength against Flash, the tension between the two students eventually reached a breaking point. It wasn't either of them that caused it, though. Instead, a teacher named Miles Warren — who would eventually become the Gwen Stacy-obsessed cloning mastermind called the Jackal, because nobody gets out of Spidey's supporting cast without a turn as a supervillain — insisted that Thompson and Parker settle their differences in a boxing match.

The result was an all-time classic tale from Spider-Man's high school era. Rather than just throwing the fight, Peter decided to avoid all of Flash's punches with his enhanced reflexes, and then hit him as lightly as he possibly could. The result of Spider-Man's gentlest punch, of course, was to knock Flash clean out of the ring. This didn't quite settle things, but by the next issue, Flash has started to realize that he'd been a little too hard on "Puny" Parker, and begins a to change his ways.

There is, however, a darker subtext to the story. Years later, it was revealed that Flash's father had been physically abusive, leading to the anger that caused him to become a bully in the first place. With that in mind, Peter finally earning his respect through physical violence isn't exactly the triumphant comedic moment that it seems like in the original story.

For the first 40 years or so of his existence, Flash Thompson was a relatively normal character, at least by the standards of superhero comics. He was a high school football star who never reached his potential, a reformed bully, and a veteran who had dealt with alcoholism. All of those were dramatic, but they were hardly the sort of operatic, overpowered melodrama that you'd expect from stories about radioactive spiders and deadly pumpkin bombs. And then Flash got a job as a teacher.

On one level, that makes perfect sense. At the time, Peter had given up on his job as a freelance photographer and instead returned to Midtown High as a science teacher. In order to complete the image of Spidey returning to his high school years, Flash had also gotten a job at his alma mater, as — what else? — a football coach. Rounding out the cast was the school nurse, Miss Arrow, who quickly began a romantic relationship with Flash.

Here's where it gets weird. Miss Arrow was not actually a nurse, nor was she actually even human. Instead, she was actually Ero, also known as "The Other," a godlike interdimensional spider totem who had taken human form by essentially shaping a pile of spiders like a woman. Her entire relationship with Flash was a means to an end, and that end involved impregnating Flash with spider-creatures that would eat him from the inside. Fortunately for Flash, that never happened, but it wouldn't be his last brush with a weird parasitic creature.

You can probably guess that a guy whose name was based on his performance on the football field would be pretty upset about the loss of his legs, and you'd be right. In fact, Flash was so eager to get his legs back that volunteered for a secret government program called "Project Rebirth 2.0," which had more than its fair share of risks.

As the name implies, Rebirth 2.0 was, like the original Project Rebirth, an attempt at creating a super soldier. Unlike the serum and vita-rays that made Steve Rogers into Captain America, however, this experiment was run by scientists who thought that it would be a really good idea to bond someone with the extremely powerful, extremely murderous alien symbiote known as Venom. Since Flash had proven his valor, willpower, and willingness to sacrifice himself in order to help his fellow soldiers, he was the one assigned to the project, with the idea being that he'd be temporarily bonded with the symbiote in order to go on incredibly dangerous missions, and then have it forcibly removed within 48 hours to prevent the bond from becoming permanent, like it had with Eddie Brock.

Surprisingly, it worked... for a while, anyway. The Venom symbiote was able to keep the bond intact by leaving a shred of itself inside Flash when they were separated. The thing is, Flash was able to reconcile his own morality — and the somewhat twisted moral code that had been seen from the symbiote's desire to lethally protect innocent lives — and help it to recover from the trauma that had led it to be so violent in the first place.

In 2018, Flash Thompson's long and storied role in the pages of Spider-Man came to an end — or seemed to, at least.

At the time, he was bonded to the Anti-Venom symbiote — which is itself a pretty long story, but is essentially an artificially created symbiote that, as you might expect from the name, can neutralize symbiotes like Venom — and was pitching in to help Spider-Man fight against what might just be his ultimate foe: the Red Goblin. As a fusion of Norman Osborn and the Carnage symbiote, the Red Goblin had implanted shards of Carnage into Peter's closest friends, ensuring that he could kill them at will. Flash, however, was able to neutralize each of these shards, saving Aunt May, Mary Jane, and others before taking on Osborn himself. Sadly, the rescue mission had left him drained and unable to do the same to Osborn, who killed him before taking on Spider-Man in the climactic battle of Amazing Spider-Man #800. With that, Flash Thompson was dead.

Of course, the only thing that happens more often than someone who knows Peter Parker being killed off is that they come back a few years later. For now, though, Flash is resting in peace as the result of a suitably heroic sacrifice.