A to Z Challenge Day 10: Jinx

This is a pretty short entry.  For some reason there's no COBRA figure starting with a J.  Maybe one has a real name starting with J, though most are generic and don't have a real name or their real name is "classified."

Anyway, for the JOEs you have Jinx, a female ninja.  One thing you can say for the GI JOE toys is they were inclusive.  You had all races and females as well as males.  It was a lot more diverse than the regular army at that time.

Have to like the red nail polish.  Just because you're a ninja doesn't mean you can't look good too!

Jinx was jinxed (pun intended) in that she was introduced in the animated movie as a new recruit along with Lt. Falcon, Chuckles, Tunnel Rat, and a couple of others.  She gets sexually harassed by Lt. Falcon and hotwires a helicopter so the new recruits can somehow fly from Joe headquarters to the Himalayas in like two hours.  That helicopter's faster than an SR-71 Blackbird!  Following the grand tradition of veiled sexism in movies, Jinx has to square off with the female Cobra-la agent Pythona.  Like Daredevil she fights best when she can't see because it like heightens her other senses or whatever.  When the DIC show aired they were already on to other characters so there was no room for her.

I think she was a lot bigger in the comics of the time.  They really pushed Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, and the whole ninja thing.  So naturally Jinx was part of that.  Despite that, there wasn't a reissue of her until the 21st Century.  They revealed her real name then as Kim Arashikage.

In the 2013 movie GI JOE Retaliation, Jinx was played by Elodie Yung, who went on to play Elektra in Netflix's Daredevil series.  So at least Jinx got some more screen time than in the 80s.

A to Z Challenge Day 9: Ice, Ice, Baby!

For I we have a lot of Ice-guys.

First, Iceberg.  The first arctic-themed GI JOE was Snow Job in the second series.  Then there was Frostbite, who came with the "Snow Cat."  The main difference was those guys were white, whereas Iceberg is black.  And from Texas.  So becoming an arctic trooper was a natural career move!

He was in the Sunbow cartoon a couple of times, but the snow guys are kind of like Aquaman in that their usefulness is somewhat limited.  There has to be a situation where the Joes need to go to the arctic for them to have any use.  There was a Robot Chicken about this where some of the other Joes prank Snow Job by staging a mission in Switzerland and then after the Gotcha! have him go shovel the Joe headquarters driveway.

In one odd episode Iceberg uncovers an Arctic lab of Dr. Mindbender where he's got an Island of Dr. Moreau thing going on, turning people into seals, walruses, polar bears, and even an otter.  Iceberg gets turned into a killer whale.  Um, yeah, so that happened.

I'm sure Iceberg appeared in the comics once or twice because you have to advertise the toys, right?  That was pretty much it for him.  He was reissued as part of the Battle Corps line in 1993, the penultimate series, so that didn't have much impact.

For COBRA there was of course an Ice Viper.  He drove the COBRA WOLF that had kind of a jet-fighter type cockpit, skis, and rockets.  I used to have that one back in the day.  Like the snow troopers themselves, it's not all that useful unless for some reason you have a battle in the snow.  Though growing up in Michigan there were plenty of times where you could have used it in its native environment.

They showed up once or twice in the cartoon and probably the comics too.  Hooray!

The most hilarious Ice-related one was "Ice Cream Soldier."  But he had nothing to do with ice.  He was a flamethrower trooper.  The idea on the file card was that COBRA would never suspect a flamethrower guy when you shout Ice Cream Soldier!  At least that would work one time, right?

Probably the most ridiculous name for any Joe figure.

A to Z Challenge Day 8: Hawk vs Headman

It's the second week of the A to Z Challenge!  For H for the Joes we have Hawk, or General Hawk as he was often called.

Actually in the first series of the 80s figures there was a Hawk but he was basically just a generic guy.  Most of his parts were shared with the rest of that first line.  He came with an artillery piece, not individually.

It wasn't until the 1986 set that General Hawk came out as the leader of the GI JOEs.  I guess they figured the Real American Heroes needed led by someone higher up than a sergeant or warrant officer.

Because of his higher rank, Hawk wasn't necessarily on the front line all the time.  Characters like Duke, Flint, or Beach Head would still mostly be in charge of the action on the ground.   His figure didn't have any cool weapons, just a pistol and a backpack.

The DIC cartoon series debuted a couple of new looks for the character.  First was one with a green spacesuit, yellow helmet, and jetpack.  It looked kind of goofy.

Then came this another one with brown fatigues, sunglasses, and the brown wedge hat thing.  An improvement?  I dunno.  He and Cobra Commander each had a backpack that also allowed them to talk or some junk.

He was in the comics around the time his figure came out and probably did some stuff.

In the 2009 movie, Hawk was played by Dennis Quaid, but I don't think he showed up in the sequel when most of the Joes were killed off.

The Headman was not part of COBRA.  He was a drug pusher since this was the early 90s and the whole "Just Say No" thing was still big.  GI JOE of course had to become part of the "war on drugs" and unlike the real war on drugs, they actually shut down bad guys like the Headman.

The Headman was in a "very special episode," or episodes of the DIC series where Lt. Falcon got hooked on some new drug pushed by the Headman.  Eventually Falcon got clean while the Headman was killed when he overdosed on his fictional drug Spark and self-destructed his Bond villain-style mountain lair.  (Because drug dealers totally have factories in the middle of nowhere hidden in mountains that have self-destruct buttons.  Why didn't Walter White think of that?)  Then a message came up:  Remember, Drugs Kill!  That was all for him!

Have to admire the design of the figure.  He totally looks like a drug dealer!  More like a pimp really.  But he was rocking the black fedora before Walter White.  I bet most drug dealers wish they had a missile launcher.  Say hello to my little friend!

Fun Fact:  For Beast Wars fans the episodes with the Headman were written by Beast Wars story editor Bob Forward and featured several of the same voice actors like Optimus Primal, Gary Chalk and jack-of-all-trades Scott McNeil.

A to Z Challenge Day 7: Gung Ho vs Golobulus

Gung Ho was not just a Michael Keaton movie in the 80s but also a GI JOE Marine who was from Louisiana, down in the bayou.  The original version of him wore only a vest and hat with a Marine Corps tattoo across his bare chest.  You have to be crazy and/or badass to go into battle like that!

He was in the cartoon through the whole Sunbow run but then disappeared after the movie.  In the movie all he did was get injured when COBRA breaks Serpentor out of the stockade.  He wasn't in the DIC series that I remember.  His toy was reissued later in a dress blue uniform that came with a ceremonial sword.  I think I rated that as the most useless GI JOE toy.  I mean what was the point?  Did they need parade marching in the middle of battle?

Major Dad!

He was probably in the comics, though I don't remember.  For whatever reason he wasn't really in the live action movies.  No way Michael Bay would have missed out on being able to use a cliche accent like that; this is why Transformers movies were so much more popular!

The animated movie introduced Cobra-La which was some kind of advanced underground kingdom of snake people led by the evil Golobulus.  He had the bottom half of a snake and the top half of a guy.  Awesome.  He was voiced in the movie by Burgess Meredith of Batman '66, Twilight Zone, and Rocky fame.  In the movie he wants to use spores launched into space to turn all humans into mindless beasts.  He also reveals that he gave Dr. Mindbender the idea to create Serpentor and puts Cobra Commander on trial for failing him.

That was pretty much it for him.  He wasn't in the DIC series and I don't think he was in the comics much.  Maybe because it was a stupid concept.  A little bit too on the nose.  And their war cry was a total ripoff of the Smurfs!  Cobra lalalalalalalalalala!  Oy vey.

It's kind of funny that Star Wars books ripped off the Cobra-la concept with the Yuuzan Vong about 15 years later.  Like Cobra-la they had an advanced civilization that completely relied on bio-organic material instead of machines.  But I'm sure GI JOE ripped it off from someone else.  That's pretty much how it goes.

A to Z Challenge Day 6: Flint vs Firefly

Flint came onto the scene for the second miniseries of the Sunbow cartoon show as basically the new mission commander for the JOEs.  After getting separated from some other Joes along with K-9 guy Mutt, he recruited Shipwreck to get him back to Joe headquarters.  From there Flint was in a lot of the first season of the Sunbow show.  In one episode he goes to visit some relatives and finds out their entire town is brainwashed by COBRA!  He was still around in the second season, though a little less with the various new characters introduced.  Him and Lady Jaye have kind of an on again-off again thing going.

He was in the comics too, probably quite a bit.  I think in the comics Flint's shirt was black like the toy, but in the show his shirt was usually green and his beret was gray.  Other than hair, Sunbow didn't seem to like using black for characters.

After the original version he was later the leader of the "Eco Warriors" who fought toxic disasters.  It was another of Hasbro's desperate ideas to stay relevant by trying to capitalize on Captain Planet and all that stuff.

In GI JOE Retaliation there's a character named Flint but he's not really like the original version.  I couldn't tell you anything he did; he was just kind of there.

Firefly was also in GI JOE Retaliation, played by Ray Stevenson, who was the Punisher in that War Zone movie that wasn't very good.  His costume in the movie was fairly close to the toy, which wasn't hard.  I mean it was gray fatigues and a gray ski mask.

He appeared a few times in the cartoon, especially early on, but he wasn't that big of a deal.  He didn't have a metal face or eye patch and wasn't a ninja so he was kind of at a disadvantage.  You got to have a gimmick!

A to Z Challenge Day 5: Effects vs EELs

As you might expect, E is kind of disappointing.  Let's just plow through it.

So for the Joes we have Effects, who was one of the last of the Real American Hero line that pretty much ended in 1994.  He was part of Star Brigade or whatever that was a space team that was a last gasp to keep from going under.

I doubt he ever appeared in anything because by then no one really gave a shit.

For COBRA you have EELs.  They were frogmen who were shown a few times on the TV show and probably in the comics once or twice.  Basically just COBRA goons in scuba gear. In one episode a couple of EELs got caught up in a giant blob and got to swim around and fight Airtight inside the gelatinous blob.  A little change of pace for them at least.

Ribbit!

The EELs were reissued in the 1992 set and appeared a couple of times on the DIC series.  While the previous Undertow frogmen came with pet barracuda, the EELs had robotic missile-launching sharks!  Gnarly.

And there you have it.

A to Z Challenge Day 4: Duke vs Destro

Today we luck out with two of the mainest characters.

Duke was sort of the original leader of GI JOE.  In the first couple miniseries he was the head honcho despite that he was supposed to be only a sergeant, not an officer.  Somehow Duke ended up being captured and forced into an arena in both miniseries, once to fight Snake Eyes and another time some big dude.  It's sort of implied he and Scarlett have a thing, though they can't really show them hooking up or anything.

But in the first full season of the Sunbow series Duke was around a lot less and mostly replaced as the commander by Flint, who was then replaced in the second season by General Hawk.  That's the cycle of life for characters based on toys who aren't as popular as Optimus Prime or Megatron.  He was voiced by Michael Bell who was Prowl (and other characters) on the Transformers show and Lance on Voltron and in other stuff too.

Yo Joe!

In the movie, Duke saves his younger half-brother Lt. Falcon by taking a snake missile to the chest.  But he just goes into a coma, from which he wakes and then mostly disappears. Watching it recently you can tell Duke was meant to die originally.  After getting the snake in the chest he has a parting "Yo Joe!" and then goes unconscious.  Scarlet says, "He's gone...into a coma."  How the hell could she know that?  She's not even a doctor.  It's kind of hard to say someone's gone into a coma after like 5 seconds.  At the end of the movie Doc calls General Hawk and tells him Duke pulled out of the coma without even showing him.  If he was meant to live wouldn't there have been a reunion between Duke and his half-brother Falcon at the end? 

Hey, baby, check out my cannon.

In the first season of the DIC series the original Duke was only a background character but in the second season a new look Duke was back as a field commander.  Kind of funny how he can ride his missile launcher.

In the 2009 movie Duke was played by Channing Tatum, who was an ordinary soldier who survives a COBRA attack and is recruited by GI JOE along with his buddy Ripcord.  But then he was killed off early in the second movie, which is probably for the best.

Destro was also in the 2009 movie and played by Christopher Eccelston, the fifth(?) Dr. Who and first of the rebooted series.  Like COBRA Commander he doesn't get his iconic iron mask until the end thanks to some nanobots or something.  He wasn't in the second movie except for one early scene where COBRA Commander leaves him behind in prison.

Destro isn't formally the second-in-command of COBRA but he is pretty much the second alpha dog.  He wears an iron mask that according to the cartoon is because an ancestor was disgraced and jailed, so his heirs wear a metal mask until law and order is destroyed.  Makes sense!  The comic probably uses a similar BS reason.

Destro mostly supplies COBRA with weapons and cool gizmos like the MASS device and Weather Dominator through a company called MARS.  And it's strongly implied that he and the Baroness are a thing.  It'snot  until the first full season of the cartoon that they mention he's Scottish, though maybe the comic does it sooner.  In the cartoon he sounds more Caribbean than Scottish but whatever.

The first version of the toy has a silver mask.  Later he gets his own squad called Iron Grenadiers and they change his mask to gold and he gets a half-cape thing.  Sweet.  The silver mask was used in the Sunbow series and movie and the gold mask in the first season DIC series.  They were both in the comics at the different periods.

Check out that cape!  Sexy.  In the second season of the DIC series, Destro is back to the silver mask.

Kind of funny that his face is silver but his neck is flesh-colored.

This Comic Book Resources article has some other facts, many taken from the comics I haven't read.

A to Z Challenge Day 3: Cover Girl vs COBRA Commander

Time for the Cs!

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.

COBRA Wants You!

The first season of the DIC show still used the 1987 armored version while the second season used the hooded one with a sound pack:

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.

A to Z Challenge Day 2: Beach Head vs Baroness

Ironically, Beach Head has nothing to do with the beach.  He's a Ranger and in the cartoon show was sort of a drill instructor too.  Since green in my favorite color, he always looked kind of cool to me:

He first appeared in the second full season of the cartoon show complaining about the lax discipline of his fellow JOES and Flint reminds him that he's only fourth-in-command after General Hawk, Sgt Duke, and Warrant Officer Flint.  Which makes Beach Head a what?  Their ranking system makes no sense really.  In another episode it's funny because the usual voice actor must have been sick or something so he sounds different because someone else was doing his voice.

He appears in the movie to train the new batch of Joes that includes Jinx, Tunnel Rat, Law & Order, Chuckles (who they were too cheap to give any lines), and someone called Big Lob who didn't have an action figure.  Beach Head is such a hardass that he uses live ammo in the training exercises!  And nearly gets himself blown up when the gray German Shepherd Order keeps fetching a bomb back to him.

His design is kind of a recolored COBRA mercenary Firefly, who'll deal with on F day.

Baroness was the first COBRA female character of which there are only two or maybe three.  She's Eastern European, wears glasses, and it's heavily implied in the cartoon and comics that she's Destro's girlfriend.

Like Snake Eyes (who we'll get to know on S Day) when she first appeared on the cartoon her clothes were bluish for some reason.  Maybe Sunbow thought that would show up better on screen?  As one of the few evil girls she showed up in the cartoon and comics a lot, even though her character wasn't reissued that many times during the 80s and 90s.

In a two-part episode during the first full Sunbow season, a team of Joes is thrown into an evil parallel universe where Baroness is actually a double agent.  She ends up helping the Joes get back to their world.

In the movie she goes undercover to locate the GI JOE energy beaming thing or BET.  That's her big contribution.

Killer Geek Girl!

In the DIC series, Destro dumps the Baroness for the younger Zarana, so she does what anyone would do:  she takes the snakeified Cobra Commander and uses a magic mask to turn him semi-human again to overthrow Serpentor and Destro--until Destro literally dumps Zarana.  After the first miniseries she splits time with Zarana as a master of disguise and Cobra's team vagina, though neither had a figure for sale.

In the 2009 movie, Baroness was played by Sienna Miller and there was this whole lame subplot of how her brother Rex had brainwashed her after Duke "died" and so she dyed her hair from blond to black and started going out with Destro.  But then she stops being evil by the end.  Which was total bullshit; just another reason that movie sucked.

A to Z Challenge Day 1: Ace vs Alley Viper

So here's the first day of the challenge.  Like last year with the Transformers I'm trying to take 1 GI JOE and one COBRA guy (or girl) per day, though some letters don't really lend themselves to that.

First up, Ace, the original GI JOE pilot.  He dressed up in what looks more like a space suit than a flight suit and flies the Sky Striker, which is basically an F-14 Tomcat, the planes used in Top Gun if you don't remember.  The Sky Striker was pretty awesome; it was over two feet long with swinging wings and missiles you could attach, though they didn't shoot.  The plane and missiles were fairly accurate to an actual F-14.

As for Ace, he was in the TV show a few times in the first season of the Sunbow TV show. But his flight suit was light teal and gray and he had black hair and a full face mask when he flew, not the bubble helmet.  His dialogue was mostly making bad poker puns.

He did get a spotlight issue of the comic book that was pretty awesome.  He duels with Wild Weasel, the pilot of the Cobra Rattler.  They dogfight for a long time, until both planes are just about junk.  Then instead of killing each other, they salute each other and go their separate ways.  Huzzah!

In 1989 they reissued the Sky Striker for "Night Force" with the body black and wings and tails dark green.  I didn't have that but I got the Toys R Us reissue of that in about 1998.  Maybe it's in a closet somewhere.

As for the ruthless terrorist organization COBRA, we have Alley Viper.  He's basically an urban warfare specialist.  And for some reason he's bright orange and blue.  That'll totally blend into alleys!

I'm not sure if he appeared in the comics much but he did appear in the first miniseries of the DIC-produced cartoon in the late 80s.  The handler of COBRA double-agent Scoop was an Alley Viper.  Eventually Scoop had a change of heart and stuffed Alley Viper into a locker.

And there you go, we're 1/26 done!