Fans of WandaVision may be surprised to find that Wanda and Vision‘s greatest nemesis in the comics was anything but a dread-inducing threat, but was in fact the vile X-Men villain Toad. Much of the blissfully lighthearted tone utilized in Wanda’s MCU television reality can be linked back to the ground laid in The Vision and Scarlet Witch comics of the 1980s. These were the first stories to introduce Wanda and Vision moving out to the suburbs and attempting to enjoy a simple, domesticated life of their own. Of course, there were plenty of villains that turned up to disturb the android and witch’s peace, but only one was persistent enough to default as their reoccurring arch nemesis.
Mortimer Toynbee aka Toad is best known as a classic X-Men antagonist. He first met the Scarlet Witch when they both served as villains under Magneto in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and he became instantly infatuated with her. At first glance, Toad may seem like a Hunchback of Notre Dame-type whose physical deformities shunned him from the woman he loves, but his actions in response to being dealt that rough hand quickly exposed him as downright creepy. Long after redeeming herself from villainy and becoming an Avenger, Wanda would consistently have to put up with Toad’s obsession with trying to kidnap her as his own.
In 1985’s The Vision and Scarlet Witch twelve-issue miniseries by Steve Englehart and Richard Howell, Toad jumps in and out of this overarching storyline in his attempt to take Wanda away from Vision and fulfill his delusion of making her his bride. From crashing their Thanksgiving celebration to building his own human-like robots to take out the android Avenger, Toad goes to great lengths to prove he’s just as ugly on the inside as the outside. However, this slimy mutant reaches an all-new level of cringe when he builds a robotic, Hulkbuster-esque toad suit and demands his enemies refer to him as “The Terrible Toad-King.” And to think he could just put all that time and money into talking to a therapist.
Issue eleven sees a very pregnant Wanda on the verge of giving birth to her and Vision’s children – which is why she’s initially not around when Toad shows up in his hilarious-looking toad suit to take down Vision once and for all. Luckily, Spider-Man’s in the neighborhood and assists Viz in the fight. But it’s not enough, as Toad actually manages to take down both heroes in his goofy getup. Toad then busts into Wanda and Vision’s home to finally fulfill his weird fantasy. Only, when he comes face to face with the woman he’s pined over for so long, he concludes that her pregnancy has made her far less attractive, and decides he no longer has any interest in kidnapping her. Needless to say, Wanda goes from defense to offense and unleashes her hex powers in a rage, taking The Terrible Toad King down for good.
As comical as Toad’s villainy is here, he actually helps set up what would later become a core dimension of the Scarlet Witch. By the early 2000s, Avengers: Disassembled would reveal that Wanda’s unrelenting powers could be triggered emotionally. Seeing Wanda’s potent ferocity subdue an enemy that just defeated the combined powers of the Vision and Spider-Man is a fun little seeded concept that would one day grow into one of the Avengers’ greatest failures in history – their defeat as a result of Wanda‘s untreated mental illness. The Avengers may have been victims to that unfortunate event, but it’s hard to argue Toad didn’t fully deserve what he got.
