The second female GI Joe character was Cover Girl, a former model turned soldier. The figure came with the Wolverine tank but she was shown mostly outside of it in the cartoon.
Like the first female character, Scarlett, she's a redhead, probably so they could just reuse the head. It's kind of funny that in Netflix's The Toys That Make Us one of the original illustrators of the Joe toy line has his own little pinup drawing of Cover Girl. He probably takes that to the bathroom with him. And you can see why. I mean she's so hot! Um...not really. I guess she was in the 2009 movie but I don't remember her. Whatever.
The Wolverine tank was kind of neat though all those little gray missiles were annoying to have to put back in the tubes. They didn't really launch either, which was probably just as well.
For COBRA there's only one C to use: COBRA Commander. Who never really had a real name, except maybe in the comics or whatever.
The first COBRA Commander was a mail-in figure who had a silver facemask. Later there was a second version that was darker blue with a hood. There were a lot of other versions too though I like the late 80s armored one as well as the original ones.
In the cartoon he was voiced by the unmistakable Chris Latta, who also voiced the evil Starscream on the Transformers cartoon. And COBRA Commander actually appears in a Transformers episode "Only Human" as "Old Snake," who gives some bad guys technology to turn Transformers into humans. After leading COBRA to numerous defeats in the cartoon, he's turned into an actual snake (albeit a talking one) in the movie.
In the movie his origin is sort of revealed. He was a scientist of the underground kingdom Cobra-la who after an accident ruined his face, he put on the metal facemask and went up to the surface to destroy the human world. This origin (and all of Cobra-la) is never mentioned again so it's not really that important.
He's changed back into a man (of sorts) in the DIC cartoon series then by the Baroness.
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| COBRA Wants You! |
In the comics COBRA Commander actually has a son named Billy. Who is sometimes part of COBRA and sometimes with the Joes and sometimes non-affiliated. Have to wonder if that was just a science experiment or if he got some woman drunk enough to sleep with him. Ick.
In the lame 2009 movie Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Rex, a disfigured scientist who eventually takes over COBRA. In the later sequel, because Gordon-Levitt wisely bowed out, the character had a more accurate look with the silver facemask.
1 comment:
Chris Latta may not have done the most roles/voices in the 80s, but he was probably THE most distinctive voice of the 80s...no one else like him out there. Cobra Commander's little cameo in Transformers always makes me smile
I liked that Wolverine vehicle..the missiles were a pain but it was a cool vehicle. There's a similar one in Halo Wars, ironically also called the Wolverine, that I've long wanted to reconfigure into a Joe-type vehicle
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