The Two Cobra Commanders

[Whitewolf]

When I was a kid, I was more into the old Sunbow cartoon for my source of "all-things-GI Joe" than the comics. But now that I've been collecting the comic packs, I'm rediscovering the Joeverse in a whole new (and decidedly more mature) light. Childhood is a wonderful thing...especially its abililty to filter out things that, as adults, we would find unpleasant. Taxes, bills, mortgages, etc. were all alien concepts to a lot of us when we were young. That built-in filtering system also applied to the cartoons we watched. I sat down the other day and watched an episode of the old miniseries that featured the Mass Device...and I actually caught myself cringing at the corny dialogue! And don't even get me started on how exactly Cobra Commander eats that turkey leg WITH HIS FACEMASK ON. But, like I said, as a kid, I did not question such things...I simply went along with the cartoon like the little sheep that I was...never questioning any of the more innane parts of the cartoon.

 

Now that I'm all "growed up," I find myself seeing the cartoon CC as exactly that: a cartoonish parody of an evil despot. He is clearly not the driving force behind Cobra...but merely a puppet dictator with his strings constantly being pulled by Destro and the Baroness. And when they aren't doing that, they seem to roll their eyes at anything he says and dismissively answer with "Yes, Cobra Commander." Every single scheme for world domination he has ever cooked up---and there have been many---gets thwarted by the Joe team no matter what. And how does he react to this each and every time? By throwing a temper tantrum that would even embarrass a two-year-old. THIS is the evil genius the world should be shaking in its collective boots over?? With this guy in charge, its no wonder Cobra Troopers couldn't hit a single Joe at point-blank range!

 

And then there's the comic version of Cobra Commander...

 

This CC is an absolute badass! He comes across as part Hitler/part business tycoon...and extremely unpredictable. There's absolutely nothing "cartoony" about him! He makes Osama Bin Ladin look like Ghandi. In the issue that came with Ace/Wild Weasel, after WW has to punch out of his Rattler from being hit by the Joe Stealth Fighter, CC yells "How many purges do I have to hold before I get some decent sycophants around here?" This comment demonstrates two things:

 

1. CC has had legions of troops executed (a la Darth Vader) for even the most insignificant infractions.

2. He'll do it again if it suits him.

 

CC never demonstrated this sort of ruthlessness in the Sunbow cartoon. Mostly he'd just be spouting off about how his latest scheme involving weather balloons would bring GI Joe to its knees while doing his best Starscream impersonation. The comic CC would just give the order, then cut your jewels off if you failed. 'Nuff said...

 

I never read the Devil's Due comics, so I don't know if his level of evil was bumped up even more, but Marvel did an awesome job actually making him somewhat believable as a villian...and actually making him one scary sumbitch...

 

I'm glad I've rediscovered the old Marvel comics. It's given me a fresh and much more respectable outlook on the Joe team's most notorious enemy. #US1#

 

Mods: I figured this would go in this forum, since its technically about the comic packs, but you can move it if you deem it necessary...

[ARROW]

Characters in GIJOE are wildly inconsistent at the best of times ( Beachhead never getting "angry" on his file card, but being perpetually pissed off in the animated movie, comes to mind.) but COBRA Commander is one of those whom the Chris Latta voice performance has irrevocably tainted for all time.

 

CC is a boob of a despot because COBRA is a nitwit organization. Any pragmatist can see that the multitude of egotists and a COBRA army numbering only in the (likely) low thousands simply isn't gonna have the stuff to "take over the world".

GIJOE, by logic, was probably only formed to tackle these annoyance so the "real army" can devote its talents to more pressing problems.

 

When the comic-CC is talking about "purges held to get some decent siccophants in return" is could just as easily be the cartoon-CC talking: said purges being firings and dumping by the wayside of useless troops and troop leaders, rather than killing them off.

 

I think part of COBRA Commander's charm is that he's a lovably incompetent despot, and though evil to the core, he never really catches a lucky break.

Probably for the best because if he ever really did, he'd probably be beyond scary...

 

Personally, I think the comic version is dull-dull-dull. He's like a second-rate Doctor Doom mated badly with the Red Skull, and a viral dose of male-PMS thrown in. I always transposed the Chris Latta voice when I read the comics, simply because.........well..........its stuck.

COBRA Comander simply has never been scary. He's all veiled threats and flamboyant, if crafty, schemes.

He's not Adolf Hitler, or Osama Bin Laden--as they would take a somewhat "sensibly-evil" straight approach and use very deadly means to achieve the same basic goals.

A truly evil COBRA Commander wouldn't take over a town, he'd gas the place with the most wretched form of nerve gas, and then callously annouce that the US Government couldn't do a damn thing about saving the people he's just killed. He'd offer his own brand of ruthless rule as a kind of "Sophie's Choice" and would keeping attacking until he got his way...........or everyone was dead anyway.

That would be scary, but he's NEVER been like that.

[hamsterboy]

My biggest beef with the character in both forms comes from his file card. They tell you he's a man without scruples. Neither one really came across as being like that. Sure there was the time the comic version kicked a puppy and didn't have second thoughts about whacking his own son but other than that,I just don't see it.

[Lost Viper]

Internationally the perspective of CC is different to the US one from my experience.

 

Many countries, inc. Australia, didn't get the cartoon so our perspective is always the comics or the filecards.

 

The UK would be interesting, because they had the cartoon (Action Force) and also the comic where things were decidedly different.

The CC (and his predecessor) in Action Force is hardcore!!

Kicking arse and taking names.

 

Wonder people in other countries thought?

 

Personally i think the cartoon universe sucks!!

 

Marvel and to a much lesser extent DD (the first stuff was good - recently it's been naff!!) have done a much better job representing good and evil, complex personalities, sub-plots and any form of character development in a "real world" environment!

 

Mind you, that being said, if you grew up without the cartoon or the comic you had to make it all up and it was a lot more fun.

Hell Snake Eyes was a bad guy when i used to play with them back in '83.

[cmderinchief]

I can quickly see this thread become yet another comic canon v. 'toon canon debate. Give it another 18 months and the point will be moot with the movie and more than likley the new comic will be rebooting both, so.......

 

Whitewolf, I am like you in some aspects. I started Joe first with the toy, then the comic and then the toon. So naturally, my road to Joe started with the filecards and comics. Where I am like you is that I accepted the cartoon never ever questioning it. All the coolness of being a kid I guess. However, when I played, my playtime reflected the comic world, the file cards and some of my own imagination. Some of the toon made its way in, but not much. Fast forward to my late 20s to mid 30's, I too watched the toon again and asked myself what the hell was I thinking. I remember being a kid GLUED to the set. Now I was fast forwarding through the scenes to avoid bad dialog. Also in this time period I re-read all the the comic issues and migrated over to DD and was still totally digging it! As an adult, there is no way that CC should be a part of an alien snake cult, but I sure as hell could buy the fact that he was a pissed off used car salesman.

 

In the comic I also seem to remember CC not necessarily wanting to Rule the World, but when they formed Cobra Island they were looking more for client states over world domination. As for CC being on par with bin Laden, I don't know about that. But it may be of interest that I did put Al'Qaeda in my Joe universe and let's say UBL and CC are not on good terms.

 

I am not afraid to admit I am an unabashed fan of the comic canon and I love to give the 'tooners grief, especially about Cobra-La.....but remember, for every Cobra-La there is a Raptor and Crystal Ball (CFB REPRESENT!) on the comic side. But hey, look at them, they got some huge love at Toy Fair so Hasbro is hearing them. This debate will continue........ @lol@

[ARROW]

I think what worked for me was that I cherry-picked the elements I liked from the three GIJOE media: namely the voices from the cartoons, the personalities and backgrounds from the file-cards, and some of the events from the comics.

Since I was an adult when I started collecting GIJOE, the cartoon held little appeal--though I did like the animated movie and have always thought that Golobulus, Nemisis Enforcer and Pythonia could have been far better handled as toys. The comics were riddled with really dumb stuff, and a lot of bad research (or "deliberate" mistakes) on the part of the writers and artists, so the toys became my "hook" to the GIJOE brand.

The toys were the only thing that satisfied me on any level, and I formed my own ideas about who was what.

 

In my head, Cobra Commander does have Chris Latta's raspy voice, but he's far more like a Osama Bin Laden than even the comics or cartoons made him out as.

The hook for me was the idea that he's "possibly the most dangerous man alive".

I had quite a few of the RAH figures, and found myself gravitating towards the more "realistic" Spec-war types. I'd prefer a Firefly over a Dr. Mindbender, a Iron Grenadier Destro over Raptor or Tomax/Xamot. I still collected those other flamboyant kinds of characters because , well...........they were the bad guys.

My ideal Joes were characters like Hit & Run and Shockwave, or even Footloose and Lt Falcon.

I went bananas when they made Big Ben and Skymate-because I was on a big SAS kick at the time.

Snake-Eyes was always a cornerstone character in my collection because almost every ninja permuation was close enough to the counter-terror look I was a fan of at the time.

[Blackjack]

I haven't been reading the comics lately, but didn't he nuke a major US city recently?