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Description
I’ve been thinking about including Toad into my Spider-Man project, but instead of being a villain, I wanted him to be the connection to a new JJJ. In my reimagining in fact, Toad is a photographer for the Daily Bugle, now run by Priscilla Fisckerpack, equally hell bent on putting down the wall crawler, and since Mayday doesn’t work for the bugle, Toad make the perfect reporter, due to his similar abilities.

Bio

This version of Toad isn’t Mortimer Toynbee, but Jason Tolansky. Jason was only 5 when his parents, desperately trying to raise their son where captured by Spider-Man (currently Miles Morales) after a robbery, the last thing that his father said to him before he was taken away from him were: “ Don’t go down my same path, forge your own future!”. These words marked the child’s future, and after his sixth birthday he escaped from the orphanage where he was taken. The child later stumbled upon an abandoned Polaroid, which was still working, and discovered how to take pictures. He was fascinated by this discovery and started keeping that camera as some sort of sacred treasure. Life was tough for Jason, who grew up either stealing food and water or feeding straight from trash cans. He eventually learned how to parkour to avoid getting caught trespassing and improved his ability as a photographer, using his trusty Polaroid. One day he saw a poster which advertised a photography competition from the Daily Bugle, that asked the best pictures of Spider-Girl. Jason decided to accept the challenge despite his distaste for the heroine ( for obvious reasons), but he saw this as a chance to improve his life. He tracked the heroine down while she was fighting Moisture in the sewers, a place he knew quite well due to his constant encounter with the cops. When he showed up to the audition they tried to take him away, as he was dressed in ragged clothes that he sewed up, and he smell pretty awful. But nonetheless he was given a chance and, against all odds, he won. Since he didn’t had a home, they let him sleep in the janitor’s storage room, where the rest of the crew put a bed. Since then he had been some sort of mascot for the Bugle’s team which became a surrogates family to the timid Jason. He even found common ground in his hatred for wall crawlers with the editor of the bugle: Priscilla Fisckerpack, who believed that this web spinner had eliminated the previous one. Jason became her first choice when it came to track down the Spider, and for a while that worked well, until he followed Mayday to the secret lab of Doc. Lebron Corback, who will soon become the Spider-sapien. He was able to get the pictures, but when the beast turned ravenous and destroyed the lab, he was struck by a one of the machines. Spider-Girl was too busy dealing with the doctor’s mutated rats to notice him, so he was able to run away, but somehow he started feeling really sick. By the time he got back, the other reporters were starting to get worried for the kid, and when he walked out of the elevator their worries got worse. His skin had turned pale white and his eyelids had become red. He collapsed to the floor in pain and he was carried to the hospital. After days of pain and discomfort he was later let go of the hospital, and was warmly welcomed back to his job. Unfortunately after an hour of celebrations, the mutation started again: he vomited a dark green gluey substance, that took days to be cleaned of the floor, his tongue started to hurt and turned green and his throat started to burn. He rushed to the bathroom in search of some privacy, and he witnessed first hand the most grotesque part of the mutation. His tongue began to grow in length and his throat started to randomly inflate, producing a frog like noise, while the others tried to calm him down they also discovered that he could now climb on walls and ceilings, perform great lips, and produce a poisonous substance from his tongue that completely atrophied a person body for 30 minutes. To cover this mutation up he sewed together a scarf that he has wore since then. At first embarrassed by his deformities, he will later use them to his advantage in his photographer work. He will even craft an homemade costume from an old Spider-Man costume, as a way to mock the wall crawlers. His lack of fingerprints also grants him an advantage against Spider-Girl as it makes him impossible to retrace. The mutation however comes with some unpleasant flaws: first of all, is susceptibility to cold temperatures that makes him really sick, which forces him to always wear heavy clothing, then there’s the inflation of his throat, similar to the one of a frog, that happens whenever he’s subjected to strong emotional outbursts such as stress, anger, happiness or sadness, a terrible insomnia, proved by the bags under his eyes, and the wet substance that he always secrete from his skin. The sticky substance that he can spit from his mouth can also be use to attend to wounds, he can spit it in a concentrated stream by letting it spill from his the fracture in his teeth, which is pretty disgusting, but after all, that’s the all concept of toad as a character. His costume is also equipped with pockets were he stores his camera, his photos and miniature spy cameras, that he position in all of New York to keep track of the wall crawler. Mayday will first encounter Toad after finding out what the bugle says about her heroic acts, surprise of how the photos are captured in moments were she thought was alone with the villains. Fearing being stalked, she contacted the 2nd Shocker and asked him to secretly follow her and looking for anything strange. The two eventually confronted the Toad, but Mayday made the huge mistake of touching his tongue which led to the atrophy of her whole body, not knowing what happened, Shocker brought her to safety allowing the photographer to escape.

Design wise I was mostly inspired by the X-men evolution version of the costume alongside the sickly appearance. However I wanted to try a completely different take on the character, which in my opinion turned out well. I love the idea of giving Mayday a threat to her secret identity rather than the safety of the city. Eventually Toad will become an essential part of the story, but that’s a story for another day.

Description
I’ve been thinking about including Toad into my Spider-Man project, but instead of being a villain, I wanted him to be the connection to a new JJJ. In my reimagining in fact, Toad is a photographer for the Daily Bugle, now run by Priscilla Fisckerpack, equally hell bent on putting down the wall crawler, and since Mayday doesn’t work for the bugle, Toad make the perfect reporter, due to his similar abilities.

Bio

This version of Toad isn’t Mortimer Toynbee, but Jason Tolansky. Jason was only 5 when his parents, desperately trying to raise their son where captured by Spider-Man (currently Miles Morales) after a robbery, the last thing that his father said to him before he was taken away from him were: “ Don’t go down my same path, forge your own future!”. These words marked the child’s future, and after his sixth birthday he escaped from the orphanage where he was taken. The child later stumbled upon an abandoned Polaroid, which was still working, and discovered how to take pictures. He was fascinated by this discovery and started keeping that camera as some sort of sacred treasure. Life was tough for Jason, who grew up either stealing food and water or feeding straight from trash cans. He eventually learned how to parkour to avoid getting caught trespassing and improved his ability as a photographer, using his trusty Polaroid. One day he saw a poster which advertised a photography competition from the Daily Bugle, that asked the best pictures of Spider-Girl. Jason decided to accept the challenge despite his distaste for the heroine ( for obvious reasons), but he saw this as a chance to improve his life. He tracked the heroine down while she was fighting Moisture in the sewers, a place he knew quite well due to his constant encounter with the cops. When he showed up to the audition they tried to take him away, as he was dressed in ragged clothes that he sewed up, and he smell pretty awful. But nonetheless he was given a chance and, against all odds, he won. Since he didn’t had a home, they let him sleep in the janitor’s storage room, where the rest of the crew put a bed. Since then he had been some sort of mascot for the Bugle’s team which became a surrogates family to the timid Jason. He even found common ground in his hatred for wall crawlers with the editor of the bugle: Priscilla Fisckerpack, who believed that this web spinner had eliminated the previous one. Jason became her first choice when it came to track down the Spider, and for a while that worked well, until he followed Mayday to the secret lab of Doc. Lebron Corback, who will soon become the Spider-sapien. He was able to get the pictures, but when the beast turned ravenous and destroyed the lab, he was struck by a one of the machines. Spider-Girl was too busy dealing with the doctor’s mutated rats to notice him, so he was able to run away, but somehow he started feeling really sick. By the time he got back, the other reporters were starting to get worried for the kid, and when he walked out of the elevator their worries got worse. His skin had turned pale white and his eyelids had become red. He collapsed to the floor in pain and he was carried to the hospital. After days of pain and discomfort he was later let go of the hospital, and was warmly welcomed back to his job. Unfortunately after an hour of celebrations, the mutation started again: he vomited a dark green gluey substance, that took days to be cleaned of the floor, his tongue started to hurt and turned green and his throat started to burn. He rushed to the bathroom in search of some privacy, and he witnessed first hand the most grotesque part of the mutation. His tongue began to grow in length and his throat started to randomly inflate, producing a frog like noise, while the others tried to calm him down they also discovered that he could now climb on walls and ceilings, perform great lips, and produce a poisonous substance from his tongue that completely atrophied a person body for 30 minutes. To cover this mutation up he sewed together a scarf that he has wore since then. At first embarrassed by his deformities, he will later use them to his advantage in his photographer work. He will even craft an homemade costume from an old Spider-Man costume, as a way to mock the wall crawlers. His lack of fingerprints also grants him an advantage against Spider-Girl as it makes him impossible to retrace. The mutation however comes with some unpleasant flaws: first of all, is susceptibility to cold temperatures that makes him really sick, which forces him to always wear heavy clothing, then there’s the inflation of his throat, similar to the one of a frog, that happens whenever he’s subjected to strong emotional outbursts such as stress, anger, happiness or sadness, a terrible insomnia, proved by the bags under his eyes, and the wet substance that he always secrete from his skin. The sticky substance that he can spit from his mouth can also be use to attend to wounds, he can spit it in a concentrated stream by letting it spill from his the fracture in his teeth, which is pretty disgusting, but after all, that’s the all concept of toad as a character. His costume is also equipped with pockets were he stores his camera, his photos and miniature spy cameras, that he position in all of New York to keep track of the wall crawler. Mayday will first encounter Toad after finding out what the bugle says about her heroic acts, surprise of how the photos are captured in moments were she thought was alone with the villains. Fearing being stalked, she contacted the 2nd Shocker and asked him to secretly follow her and looking for anything strange. The two eventually confronted the Toad, but Mayday made the huge mistake of touching his tongue which led to the atrophy of her whole body, not knowing what happened, Shocker brought her to safety allowing the photographer to escape.

Design wise I was mostly inspired by the X-men evolution version of the costume alongside the sickly appearance. However I wanted to try a completely different take on the character, which in my opinion turned out well. I love the idea of giving Mayday a threat to her secret identity rather than the safety of the city. Eventually Toad will become an essential part of the story, but that’s a story for another day.