It all started with a single picture in a newspaper.
I was a middle-schooler flipping to the Entertainment section in the Grand Rapids Press, hoping to read some rather smug reviews by film critic, John Serba, and that’s when I saw it. A single picture in the top right corner, black and white, the ink already smudging around the corners. It was a promotional still for a new movie premiering later that weekend.
Something called X-Men?
Oh, right, I remembered occasionally watching the cartoon growing up. Usually when there was nothing else on T.V. I was a Batman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle kid growing up; give me the Caped Crusader and Cowabunga all day. But the X-Men? Eh, no thanks. I missed that boat long ago. Until I saw that black and white picture.
Now, was this picture featuring that hairy guy with clawed fists? The most famous mutant of them all? Marvel’s 1990’s cash-cow? No. Believe it or not, my friends, it wasn’t Wolverine. It was staring at some dude with a crew cut and pocks speckled across his face. His mouth was agape with a giant, elongated tongue shooting out like a whip, all the way past the camera. My eyes wandered down to the caption: Toad (played by actor Ray Park) attacks an unseen foe in the new movie, X-Men, out everywhere Friday.
Toad? Who’s Toad? My brain tried to reach back to the echoes of yester-year. I didn’t remember seeing anyone named Toad in that old cartoon. This guy seemed…kinda cool, actually?
“Dad, can you take me and Philip to go see X-Men this weekend?” I asked later that evening, a question that was usual met with a yes, this time after I explained who the X-Men were was met with a “No”. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. He had zero interest in the plot. For the first time in history, my father didn’t want to go to the movies. I begged, pleaded. He saw an opportunity and like the businessman he was, made a deal. I (finally) score in my roller-hockey game tomorrow and he’ll take us. I was slacking in the league, it was summer after all… and I’d rather be playing games with my friends, but dad was paying good money so I could stay in game-shape for the winter league. After some debate we shook and sealed the deal.
Of course, during the game, I went almost three full periods without so much as a shot on goal. By some miracle, our coach threw my line out for the final shift. We spent most of the time with the puck in our zone. Time was ticking. My mind was singularly focused. My only mission was to see X-Men. I skated behind both opposing defensemen and started screaming that I was open. My teammate managed to retrieve the puck, flipped it high into the air and next thing I knew, I was blading full speed ahead on a breakaway. It was out-of-body. I deked twice, faking out the goalie, and flipped the puck over his shoulder into the back of the net.
Toad! I mean, goal!
All with less than ten seconds left in the game.
As my teammates swarmed me, I remember pointing my glove directly at my father. He was standing behind the scuffed plexiglass, grinning widely, shaking his head with a mixture of disbelief and maybe even something resembling pride. True to his word, my father skeptically hauled Philip and I to the movies that weekend. And we were hooked from Patrick Stewart’s opening voice-over narration.
And you know what?
Toad. Was. So. Rad.
This evil mutant, who was Magneto’s henchmen in the Brotherhood of Mutants, stole Cyclops’ visor, destroying the roof of a train station in the process. But that’s not all, as Toad helped build Magneto’s giant machine, flew helicopters, ate a live bird with his wicked tongue, smooshed some security guards at the Statue of Liberty and even took out Storm, Jean Grey and Cyclops all at once during the climatic final battle. The rest of the Brotherhood was daunting, sure. Sabretooth was bigger, fiercer. Mystique was cunning and elegant. Magneto was the most powerful in the faction, no question.
But Toad? Toad looked like a punk just having a good time.
My father ended up not totally hating the movie, which was a win. But my life was changed. Forever. I could feel it deep inside. This emotion, it was empowering. Like a mutant power finally unlocking. Subsequently, I had to know everything there was to know about this Toad character. That consisted of printing out every comic appearance and biography.
After buying reprinted trades of the first ten issues of the X-Men comic, I learned he was a mutant named Mortimer Toynbee. He was British. He appeared in X-Men #4, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He was a founding member of the Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Originally his character looked…not like he did in the movie. He was an annoying thorn in Magneto’s side, often complicating matters for his master in all the wrong ways. Let’s be real, he was comedic relief. The ugly punching bag who creeped on Scarlet Witch. Turns out, the tongue mutation was invented for the movie, so the old comics didn’t even have Toad whiplashing anyone. Instead, Toad just kind of…hopped. That was his mutant power. He could hop, apparently. Top it off, get this, he wore something like a medieval court jester’s costume. Toad was the fool. I was born on April Fools’ Day so no wonder I felt such kinship with this fictional character.
Anyways, one day I ended up in the local comic shop. It’s not important how I got there, but it had something to do with a Pokémon card drought. I opted to pick up Ultimate X-Men #2 by Mark Millar, because the Comic Shop Guy told me Toad was appearing in those books. He couldn’t be certain if he appeared in issue 2 but assured me it was best to jump in early to avoid plot confusion. I also bought the Wolverine Annual #1 by Frank Tieri. Now, these weren’t my first comic books ever. That would be either some random Jurassic Park comics, probably from Topps, or maybe even The Amazing Spider-Man comics my cousin signed me up for as a birthday gift. There was something called a Clone Saga happening to poor Peter Parker. And I was often lost. Oh, so lost, every issue. All I knew is Ben Reilly was cool for wearing a hoodie. Side note: please, Marvel, if anyone there is reading this, we beg of you, bring back Scarlet Spider’s blue hoodie.
But I digress, this about Toad. Poor guy.
Though they weren’t my first comic books ever, I do believe Ultimate X-Men #2 and Wolverine Annual #1 were the first comics I ever bought with my own hard-earned money. And then, the next month, I bought the next issues of each book. And wouldn’t you know it, in Ultimate X-Men #3, there he was, in a half-splash, Ultimate Toad, tattooed, long curly hair, green skin, a sneer plastered across his face, wondering aloud where his, “Sodding cigarettes went.” Turns out, Quicksilver smoked them all before anyone could blink. There was a big fight between the X-Men and Brotherhood over the course of the issue. It was mesmerizing. Kubert’s art was eye candy. I thought this version of Toad had some actual bite.
When the Brotherhood ended up working with the X-Men against Weapon X in the following arc, I couldn’t believe it. For a brief second, Toad was something like a hero. A hero who’d committed numerous terrorist acts only seven issues prior, but I digress.
I reread that third issue at least 20 times that first month. As the summer passed, something funny happened. I realized I was no longer getting my weekly allowance. Instead, my mother was just picking up comics every Wednesday within a $20 budget. Sometimes, if I couldn’t pick between the last two titles, she’d buy both and assign another chore, keeping the book as collateral. My interests grew beyond just Toad, I mean, ahem, X-Men comics.
I was picking up nearly the entire Ultimate line. Jim Lee and Jeph Loeb reopened the DC Universe with their Hush run. Next thing I knew, DC books were being added to my weekly Comic Shopping List. This lasted for years. During high school, my good friend Corey started collecting The Amazing Spider-Man during J. Michael’s Straczynski’s run, and we’d trade our comics back and forth so we could read as many titles as possible. Eventually, Marvel’s Civil War broke out where Corey, bless his heart, collected every tie-in so we could stay caught up. But this still all goes back to Toad. I promise.
Despite never being at the shop on New Comic Wednesdays, sometimes on weekends, my parents would show mercy and drive me over and I’d bring along my crinkled checklist of Toad books. I’d spend most of my precious comic shop time digging through back issues, hoping to come across a random Toad appearance. In fact, the very first Amazing Spider-Man comic I bought since those childhood subscription days was issue #266. The cover features Toad and Frog-Man attempting to attack Spider-Man, still wearing his symbiote suit. In the opening splash page, poor Toad is trying to off himself. Luckily, Spider-Man is there to save the day right before he splats on the sidewalk. Spider-Man tries to cheer Mort up, saying he has a lot to live for. Toad takes this to heart and becomes Spider-Man’s sidekick, much to Spidey’s dismay. This eventually leads to a battle where Toad takes on the Spectacular Spider-Kid and Frog-Man, with poor Web-Head witnessing this comical combat, including a bit when, yes, Toad and Frog-Man ironically fall into a pet shop window and accidentally release some frogs from captivity. By the end of the issue, Toad, Spider-Kid and Frog-Man cease fighting and form a new superhero squad, the Misfits, which as far as I know, and unfortunately for True Believers everywhere, was never mentioned again.
The Amazing Spider-Man #266 was…pure genius. And, looking back, it dealt with heavy themes like depression. After graduating high school, I enrolled in the community college. On Wednesdays, after class, I’d go with Corey and pick up comics, pizza, roughly a heart attack’s worth of Mountain Dew, and spend all night catching up on the never-ending superhero operas.
The X-Men taught me it was OK to feel like an outsider. Spider-Man taught me about responsibility. Superman taught me to do the right thing, especially if no one’s looking. Batman taught me you can stumble upon and build your own family. So many lessons to be learned, to ponder, one panel after another, true magic lurking beneath the ink and paper. When I moved to Chicago when I was nineteen, I no longer had a job, which meant I could no longer afford comics. Honestly, though, it’s probably what I thought you were supposed to do… Grow up.
As most of you know, you might go on a hiatus, but you never really give up comics forever. My comic-gap only lasted about four years, but then Scott Snyder dragged me back, my bank account kicking and screaming NO the entire time, with his New 52 Batman run. And honestly, I haven’t really stopped collecting since. Now that I work at Graham Cracker in the Loop, I don’t have to wait for Wednesdays to visit the shop.
People sometimes ask why I’m still buying comics in my 30’s. I always say, “I like to check up on my friends.” We need to know the heroes are going to be OK. And sometimes, I think the comics are making sure we’re OK, too, even if your favorite character is an evil mutant’s lackey. Philip and Corey used to say Toad was a joke. In the film, Toad gets fried by Storm’s lightning bolt. You know the bit. Toad’s body is floating in the ocean somewhere, my friends would point out. I always used to reply, “Toads can swim.”
In comics, specifically the 616-titles, Toad pops up now and then on the precipice of the Marvel universe. He quietly saved the world with Mystique, Jean Grey, Iceman, and Juggernaut in the miniseries X-Men Forever from 2001, where he gained a secondary mutation, his elongated tongue from the movies carrying over into the source material (any word on a trade, Marvel?). He was one of the few mutants on Earth who got to keep their abilities after Scarlet Witch’s “No More Mutants” debacle, because, as Joe Quesada said at the time, “You can’t keep a good Toad down.” He’s built a giant Magneto statue in Genosha’s ruins, become the X-Men’s janitor at the Grey’s Academy, finally found love with the mutant Husk, became the Hellfire Academy’s janitor, lost his relationship with Husk due to amnesia, and was even hunted in Central Park along with a bunch of other animal-themed costumers in some elaborate Kraven the Hunter plot over in The Amazing Spider-Man title. He’s reverted, of course, to his jester’s costume.
I owe so much to Toad. And Stan and Jack. Outside of Batman and the four Turtles, I thank Mortimer Toynbee for sparking my undying love for comic books. It’s that simple. I hate to say it, but Ray Park isn’t Darth Maul, he’s Toad. I’m that guy. Somewhere in the multiverse, that newspaper with Toad’s picture was thrown into the recycling bin a little earlier, and I’m not working at a comic shop.
That’s a true shame.
All those lessons left unlearnt. I’m glad I scored a goal in that roller-hockey game. You can do anything if you want it bad enough and seize the opportunity. That was a good lesson, too. Thanks, Dad. And anyone working for Marvel, if you’re still reading this, one last thing. If you ever wander into the Graham Cracker Comics’ Chicago Loop location, there might be a scraggily fool wearing a Raphael (TMNT) hat quietly reorganizing back issues. That guy has a great idea for a Toad miniseries.
