Le Crapaud

Le Crapaud is the French-language identity of Mortimer Toynbee, the Toad — a mutant villain with superhuman leaping ability and a prehensile tongue, originally a servile henchman of Magneto and founding member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and a longstanding adversary of the X-Men.

Born in the pages of Fantask #5 in 1969 — a Silver Age debut courtesy of none other than Stan Lee and Jack Kirby — Le Crapaud has kept remarkable company across more than five decades of comics history, sharing adventures with the likes of Mortimer Toynbee, Hank McCoy, Bobby Drake, and Scott Summers. Published under Panini France and appearing most prominently across Ultimate X-Men, Strange, and Titans, this character has proven quietly enduring, accumulating appearances all the way through 2020. With three collector-recognized key issues among their 21 catalog appearances, Le Crapaud is exactly the kind of discovery that rewards the dedicated back-issue hunter — a Silver Age original whose story stretches across half a century of French comics publishing.