20 times Thor was the best Marvel superhero

Image via Marvel

15. That time he befriended a frog – while a frog

This actually gets a little confusing after a while. And, no, you don’t need to roll your eyes when you’re agreeing with me, thank you very much. Because, when we’re talking about “Frog Thor”, there are actually two different entities in play.

We already know about Thor’s time as one of the frogs living in the heart of New York City. Yet, he was not alone.

See, there’s also Throg, formerly a man named Simon Walterson (we all see what you did there, Marvel writers). Simon has had a tough life. He was a rising star of an athlete, whose future career was crushed by a serious injury. He finds happiness in another career and even finds love. Alas, though, it’s not to be – his wife and their unborn child die.

Devastated by the deaths of his wife and child, Simon visits a witch to speak to them in the afterlife. However, when the witch discovers he can’t pay, she turns Simon into a frog. Simon somehow makes it to Central Park, where he’s accepted into the frog group there and renamed Puddlegulp.

Puddlegulp eventually encounters Frog Thor and helps him defeat the rats. When some of the surviving rats follow Thor, Puddlegulp rushes to tell the superhero. He witnesses Frog Thor lifting his recovered Mjolnir, thus transforming into a superpowered frog. When one of Thor’s chariot-pulling goats (more on them later, I promise) hits Mjolnir with its hoof, a tiny sliver of the hammer breaks off.

Simon/Puddlegulp lifts the sliver of metal, which then transforms into the tiny yet mighty “Frogjolnir”. Puddlegulp thus transforms into Throg, the Frog of Thunder. He even joins a group seriously called the “Pet Avengers”, a four-issue series released in 2009, followed by another four-issue follow-up the next year.