Is there anyone who actually prefers the Joes over Cobra?Everyone likes Optimus Prime and Grimlock and such and the TMNT are always rad to kids but nobody's ever going up to bat for anyone from GI Joe unless they're Snake Eyes.
>>153846561Go to bed Cobra Commander
>>153846561I like the interaction of the characters within Cobra, it’s so much fun to watch them scheme, form alliances, betray each other, and have romantic relationships. I like individual Joes, but Cobras are more unpredictable and are willing to do anything to get ahead, giving it a kind of soap opera feel.
>>153846801This. The whole appeal of Cobra is that there's so many clashing egos within the high command and it makes for a much more entertaining watch compared to the mostly-unified Joes. Not that the Joes don't make for a good contrast, though the constant Snake-Eyes wank tends to get annoying.
>>153846842I think they could do something similar with the Joes, like them each having their own ideas on how to best take down Cobra and other threats, and maybe a bit more personal ambition and relationship dynamics—good guys can still have these traits, they are humans after all. It wouldn’t as entertaining as Cobra, but it could definitely be better.
I like Wild Bill.
>>153846561The Joes were great. Cobra was also great, and Duke was a milquetoast leader dude, but most of the Joes were quality characters on their own.
>>153846561This guy. This guy right here. I identify with this guy on a molecular level.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eekTSYezXIThat bitch Scarlett just busts in, interrupting valuable cobra snack time, and he just yeets his sandwich at her.
/toy/ related but still awesome
>>153846561Michael, what the hell are you doing here?
>>153846561The Joes are pretty interchangeable with some tweaks to their personalities. Cobra has a more colorful cast of characters with abilities and specialties. And of course the healthcare being amazing is also based. But that's fine. Sometimes the villains are most of the appeal. The Joes are good as they are.
>>153846561It's so crazy that G.I Joe used to be a media juggernaut so big that the comics made Spiderman a distant second place. What the fuck happened?
>>153848253War became more and more of a bad thing to glorify, even fictionally.
>>153848253It got old, and another tv commercial took the spotlight. This was no different from TMNT, Transformers, Power Rangers, and He-Man. The nail in the coffin was the movie doing poor at the box office.
>>153848253Decades of stagnation and shifting interests in the average kid. Their last shows probably didn't do anywhere near as well as the ones in the 80s.
>>153848303>the movie doing poor at the box office>tfw i still liked the movie>tfw i liked the accelerator suits despite them obviously not belonging in a gi joe movie and barely being used
>>153848294i mean technically the Joes aren't even in uniform because they're all wearing different shit, so they're automatically committing the war crime of perfidy, whereas Cobra are not because they're faceless goons in uniforms
only recently I found out that Evil Con Carne is one big G.I Joe reference
>>153848253The end of the Cold War and the start of the Global War on Terror
>>153848366Well, yeah, Hector's main rival in world domination is a Destro parody named Estroy. It's pretty on-the-nose.
>>153848331G.I Joe is piggybacking on Transformers harder than ever so I expect something similar showing up in the Energon Universe. The Joes need something to even the game since Cobra has energon rifles.
>>153848369G.I. Joe was long gone from the mainstream by the early 90s. The disastrous production of the animated movie put the series on life support. I think Power Rangers was the next big thing to take over as the #1 kid's franchise afterwards.
>>153848451>>153848451What I don't get is why didn't they make a live action movie instead of a animated movie like He-man and TMNT did at that time.
>>153848331no, no friend, the ANIMATED movie doing so badly was what killed the franchise as far back as 1987it's truly one of the worst animated films of all time>>153848253this is only subscription, the pre-direct market way you got comics sent to you - it would have been cheaper per-issue, because you committed to buying a year up front; but it may mean those subs are for eg US forces, so that they have something for kids to read in waiting rooms on-base or whateverthe actual sales for each of those titles would probably still be found in each titles' copyright data, which I think was once a year or something, but gave average monthly circulation (sales) figures because it was a legal requirementhowever in 1985 the top 10 at Capital City were all Marvel, for examplehttps://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/1985.htmland none of them GI Joe (or Spider-Man)it's also notable that, at least as far as GIJ comics go, what you're looking at on the Capital City figures is *one retailer*, but the sales of those top titles are very much in the ballpark that post-crash sales figures have been for *entire titles* since about 2002 when the crashing finally stoppedthat is a massive amount of sales to lose and a massive amount of audience to lose access to, and that has a knock on effect on the popularity of franchises via market penetration
>>153848577>no, no friend, the ANIMATED movie doing so badly was what killed the franchise as far back as 1987Well shit. The Joes just can't catch a break in theaters.
>>153848577I don't think the animated movie was released in theatres. But do to how fucking long it took to produce, it was released on home video to make something back since the series was already starting to wane in popularity.
>>153846561idk which team has the best booties?
>>153848646From what I understand GI was hit with all sorts of production problems that caused it to be delayed. They cancelled the theatrical release since both Transformers and MLP underperformed. That added in dialogue about Duke going into a coma really kills the movie for me.
>>153848685The fact that they put Duke in the hospital, while Cobra Commander was mutating because of snake aids was the moment the script should have been scrapped.People wanted the final battle between the two faction leaders. Instead we got one of them getting the meme "I once was a man" scene, while the other got a should have died, but didn't because executive meddling scene.
>>153848779The Cobra Commander thing was one of the most memorable parts. It disturbed the fuck out of everyone.
>>153848253>>153848294People always cite that it became out of fashion to glorify the military, but Counterstrike/Call of duty and military games got BIG in the 2000's.The real issue is that GI Joe's style of depicting the military got stuck in the 80's because of older fans not wanting to let go. Modern military fanboys all like stuff thats more like spec ops stuff,not clean cut guys and 80's gear.
>>153846561>He doesn't want to be Chuckles
>>153846561The Joes are basically "what if your dad strapped missiles to a go cart". I wanted to be them and hang with the boys. Flint, Spirit, Quick Kick, Sargeant Slaughter, Roadblock, Shipwreck all great. I think I like the Joes more than the Autobots honestly.
>>153846561I like Storm Shadow and Destro and they're not really loyal to Cobra.
>>153849105Him riding on top of a helicopter, and using a pistol to fight enemy aircraft was rather impressive.
>>153846561I thought Roadblock was pretty cool when I was a kid.Movie Scarlet is pretty damn noticeable, too. Too bad she's gigamogged by Baroness kek
>>153846801>>153846842Fun fact: Hasbro didn't want to make Cobra toys because execs thought kids wouldn't buy them
>>153846561Joes always looked kind of stupid. They started out as a totally random assortment of military guys each in their own uniform. But then they very quickly dropped the military garb for karate uniforms, basketball jersies, and other ordinary clothes. They looke dmore like a local Ned's Gun Club wannabe tough guy militia than any kind of real fighting unit. Meanwhile Cobra had their basic mooks in cool coordinated uniforms, robots, cyborgs, ninjas, mutants, and shape changing super spies. The Drednoks were the only weird part since they looked like slightly meaner Joes. Being regular guys in their own cobbled together closed and weapons.
>>153849105Big "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" vibes
>>153849105People always make fun of this guy, and it's a shitty name, but he's so clearly meant to be a Miami Vice style freewheeling cop style guy, which is peak 80's style. They just dropped the ball so hard on his name. If they just committed to him basically being Sonny from Miami Vice he'd be way cooler.
>>153848253>the good guys are a bunch of all American action heroesLiberals fucking HATE it and will meme all sorts of untrue shit about it even when the Joes express the exact same values they have. The guy who made Maus flipped out on Larry Hama at a party, calling him a fascist for writing it.
>>153849418that's not even close to being the worst joe codename
>>153848253It just got stale and people moved on. GI:Joe is kind of locked into a single thing, military guys doing army shit. Meanwhile other shows get to have ninjas fighting aliens with magic powers and other wacky over the top shit. Also the 90s happened and there were just not that many serious good guys fighting bad guys types of shows around at the time. Things started to get much more wacky Looney Tunes or traditional Disney for the longest time. Then Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network made the low budget goofy adventures toon a thing again. Things like GI:Joe just was not in the style for the longest time. Action Man and Carmen Sandiego are about it for the decade. Everyone else was making Animaniacs, Disney Afternoon or Ren and Stimpy clones.
>>153849418He's supposed to be an undercover agent. That's why he's dressed like that
>>153849418Yeah, but regular looking guy in Hawaiian shirt kind of sucks for kids. It's sort of this anon's argument >>153849366The Joes were kind of bland mostly outside of a few cool ones. When at the time every new Cobra mook was a guy in a cool Boba Fett helmet with a backpack flamethrower or a giant robot claw arm accessory. Joes were getting guys that looked like out of work pizza delivery guys with a handgun, or crazy unhinged suburban dad looking guys.
>>153849462Kind of this. Action cartoons did sort of die off in the 90s. And the few that were made had stuff like magic powers or alien robots in them so they were still a bit beyond the Army guys fighting villains type of role. For the most part action cartoons were replaced with Ninja Turtles and the various Power Rangers henshin knockoffs of the decade. 00s were a bit worse since any action cartoon them was more trying to imitate anime, when channels were not just importing anime.
>>153849462>GI:Joe is kind of locked into a single thing, military guys doing army shitBro, Destro has Chthulu locked up in his basement and one of the Joes chose to stayed in an alternate dimension where Cobra won after tripping on mutant scorpion venom and finding his executed corpse in the desert.
>>153849455isn't there a Snowball
>>153849200This is the only way to ride a helicopter
>>153851425
>>153851489>Crashing while riding on top of a helicopter through a building with concrete, rebar, and glass everywhere >Immediately on the ground to help his fellow Joes out It's always been Chuckles
>>153849418>>153849455You don't get to pick your own name. My family name is Peck and when my dad was a fighter pilot they called him "Peckerhead" till his CO's wife flipped out and it was changed.
>>153851607
>>153848253>>153848253>It's so crazy that G.I Joe used to be a media juggernaut so big that the comics made Spiderman a distant second place. What the fuck happened?Sgt. Slaughter betrayed his country during the first Gulf War. The GI Joes never regained our trust after that.
>>153851684
>>153851708
>>153851708My cousin had a giant container of GI Joe toys that he hid in the crawlspace under his house that we would play with when our family would visit. His dad died, they sold the house and he left them there. I always wondered if someone found them
>>153851768My older brother collected them, so I grew up playing with a ton of hand-me-down GI Joe toys. I still have the giant space shuttle set in my garage.
>>153851825
>>153849488I don’t have a problem with the Hawaiian shirt myself, I think it’s the code name that fails him. If he was named something like Vice or Rat Patrol or something more edgy it’d give him more of a cool feel.
>>153846561>but nobody's ever going up to bat for anyone from GI Joe unless they're Snake Eyes.I like Lady Jaye and Beachhead but I much prefer Cobra since they are petty arseholes
>>153846561Besides Snake Eyes, I thought other Joes like Scarlett, Lady Jaye, Flint, Shipwreck, and Beach Head were cool. That said, as much as I like heroes, I felt having cool and interesting villains were a nice bonus.
I could see some boys being more engaged by the real world us military GI style of the joes compared to the scif-fi stormtrooper look of the cobras.
>>153849462>Action Man and Carmen Sandiego are about it for the decade.are you forgetting fucking batman and superman?
>>153846561I'm a BIG fan of Lady Jaye and Scarlett.
It's interesting how G.I. Joe barely got any games and how it never went through an edgy phase/reimagining.
>>153854167There was an Atari game that's decent fun, an arcade game that's excellent, and a C64 game that was... interesting.
>>153854123Sorry, you get Baroness and nothing else.
>>153846914The Joes having to follow the military chain of command means you can't really have stories where one of them goes rogue to do his own thing and gets to keep his job afterwards, the best you could really do is have someone who's trying to get promoted over Duke, Flint and Hawk because he thinks he could do better, or because he just has that Starscream urge to be the one in charge.>>153848253GI Joe was really popular in the mid 80s, that's all.
>>153848303>The nail in the coffin was the movie doing poor at the box office.The 1987 animated movie got released direct to video due to so many previous toy cartoon movies having flopped at the box office. There was no way it could have turned a profit going direct to video back then.>>153848451>G.I. Joe was long gone from the mainstream by the early 90s. The disastrous production of the animated movie put the series on life support.It actually had a bit of a resurgence in the early 90s, with a new cartoon, several video games, and the toys weren't selling badly, IIRC there was an upswing in sales.>>153848577>the ANIMATED movie doing so badly was what killed the franchise as far back as 1987There is no way Hasbro staked the entire future of GI Joe as a brand on a direct to video movie. Even the decision to end the cartoon would have been made well before the movie was released, else a new season would have been very far into development already, the same way Transformers had a new season broadcast just a few months after the 1986 movie.With the cartoons, Hasbro simply moved to funding cartoons for their newer brands like Inhumanoids and Visionaries. That GI Joe kept on trucking for a few years without a cartoon hardly means "the franchise was killed".And that movie not fitting your rigid idea of what a GI Joe movie "should be" doesn't mean it's "the worst animated movie ever".
>>153849320>Fun fact: Hasbro didn't want to make Cobra toys because execs thought kids wouldn't buy themIt's worse than that, Hasbro didn't even think to have villains at all, the very idea didn't come up until they had a meeting with Marvel about making the comic, and the question "who are they going to fight?" got asked. IIRC it was Archie Goodwin who came up with the idea of a villain faction named Cobra. All of the other 1982 toys existed at least as prototypes by this point, so that's why the line started off with just three Cobra figures who seemed like an afterthought.
>>153854340>And that movie not fitting your rigid idea of what a GI Joe movie "should be" doesn't mean it's "the worst animated movie ever".This. It's got 7.0 out of 10 on IMDB, and I don't remember it being terrible either.
By default you are already rooting for the heroes this is why the villains should be extra cool.
>>153849635People who never saw the Sunbow cartoon have this common misconception that it's grounded in semi-realistic military and terrorist plots like the comic often was, and have no idea how far out the cartoon got.A lot of the times it seems like the actual GI Joe fans who are most infuriated by the movie are ones who either never saw any of the cartoon except the movie, so they don't know it's not even that weird for that show, or people who hated the cartoon anyway and are shocked that they also disliked the movie.
>>153854373It's beautifully animated, it's got great voice acting, (possibly Chris Latta's best ever performance, who else could even have done that?), and great action scenes.No matter how much some people want to seethe about how snake people can't be in muh GI Joe cartoons, there's a baseline level of skill well above "basic competency" on every level of that movie that simply isn't there for the truly terrible animated movies, the knockoffs of Disney movies that exist just to trick confused parents into buying them, the awful early CGI stuff, and the ones that seem to exist purely as some sort of money laundering scheme.
>>153846561Sergeant Slaughter is pretty great. Rest of the Joes are kinda meh.I'll take the Baroness or the female Cobra troopers any day. Because I have a ryona fetish, and trading hits with those girls sounds lovely. Go Joe!
>>153854444It’s also how like people always think the franchise is heavily jingoistic when the 80s show is very optimistic about wanting to avoid actual nation conflict with Cobra as bad apples speaking to general human vices.And the comic is particularly sardonic and cynical with Cobra being a corruption of the American dream and a general recurring theme that the Joes are at the whim and mercy of bigger forces and get stuck with the dirty , thankless work while politicians and bureaucrats are out of touch. Hama leans in under no uncertain terms that he’s glorifying duty and fraternity that makes bonds between people in the same unit, not blind jingoism or trying to glorify war. The last issue of the original Marvel series is a coda for it and well worth reading for anyone who accused the franchise of things without knowing.
>>153854693>and well worth reading for anyone who accused the franchise of things without knowing.And knowing is half the battle
>>153851684>>153854639I kind of wish Hasbro and WWE had worked something out back in the day so there were some wrestlers playing the roles of Cobra characters for Slaughter to go up against and they become good guys to keep fighting him when he sides with Iraq
>>153849366Genuinely me, my dad kept telling me to get Roadblock but i always wanted the Cobra trooper.
>>153846561I’ve always liked the villains more. They’re usually a much more fleshed out character with motivations you understand and they always look cooler.
>>153854340>There is no way Hasbro staked the entire future of GI Joe as a brand on a direct to video movie.That movie took over five years to release. It was intended to be a theatrical release, but nobody gave a shit about GIJ by 1987. Also, I went into that movie just the other year for the first time, with no preconceptions about what it should or shouldn't be. It's just a bad movie. It's poorly made, animated, edited, performed. The story is stupid.
>>153855189>It was intended to be a theatrical release, but nobody gave a shit about GIJ by 1987.They were just coming off their two biggest years so far in toy sales, and you want us to believe by August of 1987 GI Joe was a dead brand nobody cared about? It's well-documented that the movie got demoted to a direct to video because Transformers, He-Man & She-Ra, Gobots, Care Bears and MLP had all underperformed or outright bombed at the box office, by the time the GI Joe movie had been completed it was obvious audiences were only showing up in numbers to animated movies that were Disney or Disney-adjacent, not to toy cartoons, that's why the decision to release it direct to video was made, not for reasons specific to GI Joe itself as a brand.>It's just a bad movie. It's poorly made, animated, edited, performed. The story is stupid.Whatever, anon. If you actually somehow believe all this, you do you. Go watch something you might enjoy more like Sir Billi or Foodfight.
>>153846561I do. I also think that Cobra has a major problem in that it lacks the memorably designed minor cast the Joes boast. >>153848331The accelerator suits feel like they should be a Cobra thing.>Acceler-Vipers>Warning: Proper use of M.A.R.S. Industries Accelerator Suits may cause the following medical conditions: contusions, lacerations, muscle strain, traumatic subluxation, luxation, and disarticulation of joints, and forceful arrangement of bodily position in a manner incompatible with life.
>>153854444>>153854505Ultimately the problem with the film is that what audiences wanted was a big, fantastically animated film about the Joes fighting Cobra and instead Cobra was taken off the board in the first act and replaced with new guys. It'd be no different than them removing the Joes and having Cobra fight the regular US Army.
>>153854340>It actually had a bit of a resurgence in the early 90s, with a new cartoon, several video games, and the toys weren't selling badly, IIRC there was an upswing in sales.More accurately, the resurgence was because the toys were continuing to sell well. There weren't any major hits in the late 80s and kids preferred getting new toys from the older brands, including GI Joe.
>>153856698Hard to imagine that she's the IDW's Energon Universe version of this girl.
>>153848570Hasbro is cheap. REALLY fucking cheap. A lot of people see the TF movie and GI Joe movies as killing the momentum, but while that did shake a lot of kids off, what also hurt was them cheapening out on more GI Joe episodes for years before switching to DiC, and not ordering more TF episodes period. I think that's heavily colored people's perceptions of the movies, because while they were big shakeups, they were also about the most they were willing to spend, period at the time. The TF movie was ordered shortly after Season 1 and was written before S1 even aired, and the GI Joe movie was greenlit shortly after the initial seasons airing. Hasbro still kept the show's in syndication for years after, including filming new live action segments for Transformers with a Powermaster Optimus, so they still wanted. I think it's that Hasbro just saw the initial episode oreders as all they needed and could just kept the shows in perpetuity without needing to order new episodes.Weirdly enough, GI Joe's two most profitable years were said ages ago to be '86(makes sense) and..1993. Now, the Street Fighter figures might've contributed to that, but point stands that even with no cartoon at the time it had a great year and held it's own on shelves. What does Hasbro do with that? They make..a DTV Sgt. Savage because they didn't want to pay for a whole show. By the time they did with GI Joe Extreme, it was 3 years later and waaaay too late.Mattel was, especially back in the 80's before Hasbro absorbed Kenner and Tonka and Parker Bros and others, a much bigger company. They were able and wiling to pour more money into He-man than Hasbro ever would be willing to spend. He-man had more stuff like the live action tour or just general store appearances and more merch and specials. Hasbro so rarely wants to do work cultivating success, even now. You have them luck into things and then failing to stick the landing.
>>153846561I unironically think cobra commander is one of the greatest fictional characters made within the 80s and no one can tell me otherwise
>>153849366Dreadnoks looked like extras out of Hokuto no Ken since ARAH was animated by Toei
>>153858123>>153849366Helps to sell the Dreadnoks as their faction. You've got Cobra and its legions of uniformed Vipers and CGs, Destro with MARS/the Iron Greniders based on his own tastes, and the Red Shadows from Action Force with their wartime German paramilitary vibe.
>TFW you obtain your first fursuit
>>153857972He's the best 80's villain, the best balance of feeling competent(none of them are really competent but I can buy him being successful) but also being a fun character to watch.Megatron is at one end- completely menacing but not really any fun character quirks or idiosyncrasies, he's cool but almost boring. Skeletor is at the other end- full of character but nit menacing at all. Then you have guys like Mumm-ra, who has cool moments that amount to humiliating defeats and makes him seem important overall, or Shredder who's cool but clearly is the Krangs bottom in the relationship. That's funny as hell but makes him not intimidating. Then you have nobodies like Miles Mayhem.CC though? I can actually see him kill a guy while also fussing and complaining about the fore he made and screaming at subordinates to clean up the mess and complaining about needing to change uniforms.
>>153857099It's kind of hard to say the animated movie was the big reason for the momentum crashing. It did have a disastrous production, and Hasbro probably wasn't happy for it taking five years to make. It's more like the marker where the franchise started to slow down, and kids began to move on to other franchises.
>>153858668why does everyone ignore Venger? He is even voiced by Peter Cullen
>>153858668CC became the bottom bitch to Serpentor though, and the movie really fucked him up by making him into some prehistoric, bipedal snakeman secret agent, that got turned into a literal snake man.
>>153854200And two NES games that were quite decent.
>>153858780the worst character assassination you can do to a villain is making a big reveal that he was just a errand boy for someone else that was hiding somewhere
>>153848253didn't expand into ascending forms of the secondary media, video games/film.
>>153858668Behind cobra commander my favorite 80s toy villain is skeletor but CC will always be my favorite. Megs is fucking boring unironically and only became better as galvatron where he was so nuts they literally put him into an alien insane asylum in one episode. Krang is also based as hell too. Hes tied for second favorite villain alongside skeletor>>153858780Im one of the few cobra commanser stans who actually loves serpentor as a character too. Arise serpentor arize is imo the peak of gi joe arah. But like >>153858852 said i hated how the commander so revealed to be the stooge to cobra la in the movie despite the fact i dont hate cobra la itself as much as other joe fans do either.
>>153846561When did he lose the hood, and get the cool faceless mask/helmet combo look? Was this something the Japanese animaters cooked up? Because it really has that anime aesthetic appearance. >>153858780Where did Serpentor even come from? I don't remember when he showed up, only that he started making orders, and CC became a patsy. I originally thought he was a movie byproduct, but he showed up as surprised as everyone when some snakeman civilization was revealed.
>>153858746Venger imo falls under the so competent but lacking quirk as to be a bit dull. He stands out being intimidating, sure, but I think the 80's villains people remembered most has some idiosyncrasies people latch onto. I think that's why Starscream and Soundwave outside Megatron in G1. >>153858780the difference is that CC fucking hated being demoted in his own organization and plotted against him, he didn't take it lying down, and even when he was a snake had some fight in him.The Dic series even has him getting his revenge. It just ends up making him more endearing. Shredder and Mumm-ra really felt like they'd be nothing without their higherups, they're entirely reliant on them for power and Shredder rarely attempts to escape that arrangement. The VAs and writers openly said they played the two as an old married couple, which is funny as hell but also isn't a good look for '87 Shredder because he's clearly the wife in the marriage.
>>153858990>Where did Serpentor even come from?Start of season 2 of the Sunbow cartoon. There was a big five part series where they genetically engineered a new Cobra leader.
>>153858990Serpentor was one of Dr. Mindbender's creations, the ultimate military conqueror built from the genes of history's greatest tyrants. Unfortunately for CC, he wasn't going to be the one bossed around and stole control of Cobra from him.
>>153858990>When did he lose the hood, and get the cool faceless mask/helmet combo look? Was this something the Japanese animaters cooked up? Because it really has that anime aesthetic appearance.The original cobra commander toy even as far back as the concept art featured the mask. The hood im pretty sure is an invention by larry hama for the comic which he wore alongside the mask. The action figure of the hooded cobra commander was only a mail away back in the 80s while the masked version came out first and was actually in stores unlike the hood version. Also the performative make cock sucker producer for the gi joe movies alongside the transformers movies at paramount allegedly forbade hasbro from making anymore hooded CC action figures like the SJW cuck he is, hasbro complies because they wanna stay in paramounts good graces. It makes me so pissed.>Where did Serpentor even come from?Hasbro ordered the writers include a new cobra emperor figure they were cooking up and the writers or hasbro came up with two ideas, either serpentor was pulling the strings for cobra behind the scenes the entire time or cobra scientists made themselves a new leader and eventually they combined both plot ideas into the story.
>>153859109I like to imagine CC wear gaiter cuffs because he could easily trip over his own shoe laces.
>>153846561Flint, Hawk, and Duke aren't all that different really. but the other Joes are pretty cool though. I guess they should just have had one big hero leader guy for the Joes.
>>153846561Military brats>>153846842The appeal of cobra is they cooler sci-fi themed vehicles and a bunch of masked guys you can see yourself as.
>>153854444The actual fans are fans of the Marvel comic. The Sunbow cartoon was too weird most of the time.
>>153860353The actual fans of the kids Saturday morning toy commercial are the kids who played with the toys.
>>153848253>>153849366You don't think a big aspect of what tanked the franchise might be how EVERY single reboot consists of like 5 guys running and hiding from COBRA who is an evil corporation? What made the old stuff fun was that it consisted of a shitload of insane vehicles with guns, missiles, and guns that shoot missiles with mini guns that fire bullets while the missile is flying at the enemy. And every figure could fit into any one of them. Hasbro spend the 80s churning out fucking nuts tanks, planes, robots, and gigantic monster truck missile launching nightmare machines for every one of the Joes to fit in. But every revival series is nothing but Duke, Snake Eyes, Scarlet and 2 wild cards being normal ol nobodies doing on the ground spy shit and nothing interesting happens. Joes are supposed to be about the fucking wild vehicles like the jet powered hang glider thingy. Hasbro has never wanted to do that again.
>>153860353The sunbow cartoon was the best of the 80s toy commercial cartoons, and i always hated the ARAH comic fags for being killjoy no fun allowed types who bitch and whine whenever the franchise is the slightest bit sci-fi or outlandish because "not muh joe realism" which is retarded of them.
>>153859109I remember one episode pointed out that CC's face was hideously disfigured in some way. Destro walked in on him eating and was disgusted. CC picked on him for being a wimp about it.
>>153860170I'm reading the comic right now and it baffles me how they put 0 effort into making Hawk and Duke distinct from each other. Sometimes they show up in the same page and if it wasn't for the dialogue you would have no idea that they aren't the same person
>>153860539Like many of these old 80s franchises, the villains get different backstories depending on the medium. Cartoon CC was some prehistoric snakeman agent whose goal was to pave a way for a future invasion, while the comics was a disgruntled salesman who founded a terrorist organization because fuck capitalist society.
>>153857972I really love the used car salesman angle and Cobra-La as a whole kinda fucks with the twisted American Dream angle.
>>153860912I never read much of the gi joe comics but i wish the comic origin of cobra commander was in the cartoon rather then the cobra la shit. And i dont hate cobra la for being outlandish or sci fi either i hate that plot squarely because i dont like the origin for CC it presented
>>153860539It was the 70s moustache.
>>153853323but it's supposed to point to his unassuming look. If someone actually referred to him by his codename in the field it would still come off like a nickname as opposed to a giant red flag.
>>153860949The problem with Cobra-La is that it's entirely out of left field AND immediately fucks with an established setup that doesn't need it. If there were some named Cobra bad guy who was the "weird cult shit" guy who created some grand mythos about Cobra that was all mystical bullshit only to find an antediluvian serpent people civilization on a mission that made him think he was a prophet, and now you've got both Cobra and Snake People each trying to use and usurp the other for their own benefit you could work it in pretty easily. As is Cobra-La reeks of executive input.
>>153846561I don't care about GI Joe anymore but when I was a kid, I liked the joes and cobra about equal, I guess.anyway, something I found out years ago was that Shipwreck is just Nicholson in The Last Detail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TeoD7KyfC4
>>153860949>>153862782I know this isn't the popular opinion but I would love a live action Cobra La movie. Filled with gruesome body horror
>>153862782I have a soft spot for Cobra-La just because I like the idea of something horrific, way beyond what we've seen so far, looming in the background the whole time a story is going.They were supposed to drop a hint of Cobra La sometime during season 2 but never did.
Cobra is way cooler, yes.Except the Dreadnoks. Can't stand them.
>>153863460Dreadnoks are based, shut the fuck up boco
>>153863496I found the the skybound G.I Joe run meh for the most part but the dreadnoks arc is when I started "feeling it"
>>153863496>>153863597theyre just evil shitstains who love hurting people and money..
>>153864223Hence why theyre so damn cool and enjoyable as characters
>>153846561>>153846984This, and my boy Barbecue>>153864223And grape soda>>153854167>it never went through an edgy phase/reimaginingDepends how edgy you mean, I guess, the Larry Hama comic had its moments. Haven't read the recent comics, but the Transformers one started killing off characters for shock value, wouldn't surprise me. And G.I.Joe Renegades still felt pretty 2000s-y.
>>153854167>how it never went through an edgy phase/reimaginingGI Joe Extreme
>>153864599Rock'n Roll gets the Bumblebee treatment
I think these 1987 guys would have been better received if they actually came with weapons.
>>153865045>Big BoaA holdover from a proposed Rocky figure, but it makes sense for him to focus on melee combat. Same goes for Croc Master, the crocodile is his weapon
>>153865147Having a handgun or something would have been better like the hook comics Croc Master has:
>>153865045Serious Masters of the Universe vibes here.Did Hasbro steal scrapped He-Man designs and shove them into G.I.Joe or something? Also the Bane clone is just really funny.
>>1538482539-11 permanently shifted the perception of Terrorists in the world from flashy assholes that just want to terrorize for money to Arabic extremists hiding in a dirty cave somewhere using IEDs for Religious extremism. It's also why Die Hard crapped out (well that Willis getting old and harder to deal with). You can't make a character like Hans Gruber anymore
>>153854261>you can't really have stories where one of them goes rogue to do his own thing and gets to keep his job afterwardsI'm pretty sure the cartoon had like 3 episodes where they did just that.
>>153865365He was released 6 years before Bane was created.
what made me interested in joest wasn't the specific premise as much as the form factor of the toys. small highly posable figures with a bunch of accessories 'ed gimmicks, they could have really been anything and i would have fallen for it.
>>153855673It also takes off most of the tv show Joes in favor of new guys, although it did admittedly do a much better job of keeping at least some tv show characters in the action for the whole film compared to the Transformers movie which exclusively featured the new movie characters after about 20 minutes in with the exception of the Dinobots
>>153865365Crystal Ball's file card was written by Stephen King.
>>153846561I liked Cobra more as a kid, the problem with the Joes is there are 50x more characters so none of them get anywhere near the development and screentime of CC, Destro, Baroness, and Zartan. As an adult I have favorite Joes beyond Snake Eyes who I wish would get more exposure, like Clutch and Mutt and Snow Job. I haven't seen much of the cartoon though, only read the Hama comics.
>>153863325>>153863441Cobra La isn't the problem itself, its how they handled it. >>153865045Raptor and Big Boa look like they belong in He-Man, Crystal Ball is a shitty Dr. Mindbender knockoff, and Croc Master is just "whatever."
>>153849105Why'd they make him nonverbal in the movie when the entire point of the character is that he's super gregarious?>>153851684The "I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK" promos during his redemption arc were kinda kino.>I can live with my friends abandoning me, I deserve it>I'll never see my family again, I accept it>But I NEED MY COUNTRY
Remember GI Joe Extreme?
>>153865855
>>153865855>>153865869Looking really Image Comics there Joes.
I actually love Cobra’s individual characters more than their army builders.
>>153851684Did Vince really think nobody would notice that he brought back the Iron Shiek with a new name?
>>153846561Sgt. Savage was a pretty cool and original character
>>153866014Hogan needed a new rival, might as well trash another babyface to do it for the shock value.
>>153846561The show and comic were very all over the place with who was used with the Joes. It wasn't like Season 1 and 2 of Transformers cartoon where in the 65 episodes Optimus Prime showed up in all but four(A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court, Auto-Bop,Hoist Goes Hollywood, and Trans-Europe Express). Adding season 3 where he was mostly absent he still showed up a total of 66 times, 67 if you count his ghost appearance in the 5 Faces of Darkness part 3. Of the first 95 Episodes of GIJoe, Duke was only in 30 episodes. Snake eyes was even worse with only 25 episodes. So it's not that the Joes were less memorable, or are not preferred, it's just that there were no staying cast members to get attached to like we had on the Cobra side as Cobra Commander was in 79 of the original 95 and was basically the main character of the DiC series with 20 stories focused on him. It's the weirdest thing about the 80s GIJoe cartoon is it's the only one that stayed more focused on the villains than the heroes.
>>153865855Iron Klaw was pretty cool. He should show up in Gi Joe comics
>>153865855>>153865869As much as I wanted to like that series it was just banal in it's story telling that I never stayed hooked in an episode, which is ironic considering the title.
>>153866091They needed to keep introducing characters to sell toys. But what is weird, is Cobra remained mostly intact, while the Joes had a revolving door of new recruits that kept replacing the older cast.
>>153866014This was pretty much when Hulkamania was dying out so Vince was starting to go insane. More insane, really.
>>153866144It's cause there were way more Joe figures that Cobra ones. Most Cobra figures were "troop" ones while Joes were all unique
>>153846561The Joe's needed Rocky on the team
>>153866144Right but so did Transformers, He-man, TMNT, etc but those show tried to keep a "core cast" at all times, that for whatever reason was never the formula for GIJoe. What GIJoe did would be to have He-man as the main focus for 8 episodes for Season 1 for him to be gone and have just Man at Arms and Orko to be the focus for 5 stories, to then switch over to a two parter involving Stratos, to then switch back to He-man for one episode, for him to be gone, and Hero-Ro fleshes out the last few episodes. I enjoy the GIJoe series but it felt like a lot of self contained sagas that never seem to be connected in a way the other 80s cartoons were.
>>153866211Couldn't they have just had him wear the boxing gloves? Or better yet, give him cyber arms to indicate he was a super robot puncher? I can't call this lazy at all, just really try hard to avoid getting sued.
>>153866272That was an idea to get Sylvester Stallone's approval actually. When Hasbro made the deal to use Rocky they forgot to get Sylvester Stallone's likeness approved and when pushing for that it made the whole licensing agreement fall through and thus no Rocky figure, this was not the first time nor last time Hasbro would get the rights to names of things but forget to actually get the trademarked good they were actually after (Go-Bots, Inhmanoids, etc)
>>153864648Well that sucks>>153865045And you can see Crystal Ball supposedly is carrying a weapon in his leg.Also I thought the original Big Boa had a huge-ass machine gun.
>>153865855The main villain iron klaw was a badass design
>>153865855>Dictator Spawn
>>153847112>>No thank you, I'm only hungry for informationI love it.
>>153866417that's not how it happened.The deal was rolling along until a rival company made a deal with Stallone for a whole line of Rambo figures. that's how we got the Rambo cartoon. Hasbro pulled out, but now before putting his profile in their Marvel G.I. Joe profile comic
>>153867413later issue
>>153865790wasn't Crystal Ball created by Stephen King or at least have his profile written by him?
>>153865045I liked crystal ball and croc master and they had weapons from other figures.
>>1538650451987 has some of the coolest figures in the entire gi joe toyline and im tired of pretending it was the worst year for joe toys
>>153865045Croc Master came with a croc, what better weapon is there?
>>153865045Also wanna add how i think its funny and also kinda sad how crystal ball is one of my favorite cobra characters and yet he was apparently one of the worst peg warmers in the line, so much so that their are reports of stores ten years after his release still having carded crystal ball figures rotting in the clearance bins. I hate how much alot of OG gi joe fans were really into the military realism schtick so much so that they vehemently rejected any of the cooler designs, characters, and stories that went even a tad bit outlandish or fantastical. Its almost as bad as sonic fans autism where they rage over any and all slight differences made to their blue hedgehog series.
>>153847135>classified figuresI fucking hate how 6 inch autism has taken over the toy industry. The original ARAH scaled 3.75 figures is a dead brand at this point. All these redditors just want every toyline to scale with their marvel legends figures now.
>>153865894Agreed but their army builders can be based too
>>153867771The problem with him is that the shield thing he comes with just looks dumbI don't think he's that out there really, his design is not that much crazier than Zartan's. If they had just given him something less dorky he might have caught on. Like even an actual crystal ball would be better.
>>153867771Big problem was the cartoon was no longer around to highlight new characters like him.
>>153865855>>153865869Literally just Cable and War Machine
>>153848253It was only popular in America.
>>153860912In the comics you get bits and pieces of Cobra Commander's backstory over the years, Hama still hadn't filled in a lot of the blanks by the time of the movie in 1987. Yes, the two origins are obviously incompatible, but even if the comics and cartoons weren't already doing totally different things with a lot of characters, the cartoon didn't yet have the full comic origin to draw on, as it hadn't all been written yet.And I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's sad how the one part of the comic origin people obsess over is the "used car salesman" part over everything else, when the really important parts are how he gets radicalized by what happened to his brother, and the ways he raises the money to start Cobra up. The used car salesman part is literally just because as a career it had become shorthand in fiction for telling audiences a guy with that job is a shifty guy you can't trust who can talk you into a bad deal.
>>153855673Cobra isn't "taken off the board" though, they're in the whole movie.>>153858852In fairness, Cobra Commander wasn't the lead villain by this point, and as with Starscream in the Transformers movie, the plot was for this guy to finally get comeuppance, so making him look like the big main villain wasn't even a consideration.>>153858906>Im one of the few cobra commanser stans who actually loves serpentor as a character too.It's rare to find someone who appreciates both. Bless you, anon. Doubly so for also being a Krang bro.>>153863441I know it's divisive and I know it couldn't work in most iterations of GI Joe outside of that cartoon, but I've always liked Cobra-La, and way it just suddenly comes out of nowhere is part of that appeal. Not many things even attempt that sort of sudden genre shift where you're in a horror movie now.
>>153865045Does Croc Master's whip not count as a weapon?
I just realized that the Cobra logo looks like a vagina and I will never see it in the same way as before ever again
>>153867857big issue is that no one really has the money or space for big vehicles which was the bread and butter of the GI Joe line. Stores aren't dedicating space to big vehicles, kids aren't getting them because their parents can barely afford them let alone a space for putting them, adult fans are the only ones willing to buy them and even then they have to be selective because after 40+ years of collecting they're also running out of space. This has been a problem for a while, too, Sigma Six attempted making the vehicles scale to even smaller figure scale for vehicles which also didn't work. The 3.75 figures were infamously meant to be loss leaders and sold for barely if any profit so the vehicles could make the real money, and that structure just doesn't exist like it used to. Plus the more detailed figures get, the harder it is to hide the fact that GI Joe figures don't really scale to vehicles bigger than a car or small tank and it looks wonky.
i could dig a workplace comedy solely centered around cobra and such
>>153872054It was made already >>153848366
>>153867857>All these redditors just want every toyline to scale with their marvel legends figures now. it's mostly just the fact that it's a lot harder to sell an 18 dollar 3.75 than a 25$ 6". modern toy prices badly damaged 3.75" figures, anything that doesn't have kenner nostalgia as a fallback.
>>153869692LolLmao>>153872054I'd love that
So age old question here. Which do you prefer as the basic Cobra grunts? Vipers or good old fashioned Cobra Troopers? I've always been partial to Vipers, myself. Not only do I feel they look cooler, but I like that their helmets are similar to Cobra Commander's face mask. It gives the look that these guys have given up their individual identities and fully become instruments of the Commander's will.
>>153864599>>153864643I'm talking like, making Cobra into a "proper" terrorist organization or turning it into a cult. Torture, rape, mass casualties, y'know. Turning the Joes into a critique of the U.S. military or the Military Industrial Complex, with the Joes mimicking Spook ops and what not. Iraq, Afghanistan type beat.
>>153868064I thought the shield was cool...Also i dont remember where i heard it from but the crystal ball figure was actually more expensive to produce then alot of other figures in the line cuz of the lenticular shield and lenticular technology was mostly a premium back then.>>153869035This, crystal ball coming out in the gap year between the sunbow cartoon and the DIC cartoons did seriously fuck him over.>>153870426> Yes, the two origins are obviously incompatible, but even if the comics and cartoons weren't already doing totally different things with a lot of characters, the cartoon didn't yet have the full comic origin to draw on, as it hadn't all been written yet.I didnt know any of this cuz ive never read many of the comics. How interesting >The used car salesman part is literally just because as a career it had become shorthand in fiction for telling audiences a guy with that job is a shifty guy you can't trust who can talk you into a bad deal.And thats why i think that is funny. The whole fact he was a used car salesman and became radicalized so he took swindling people out of their money for cars to making a pyramid scheme to swindle people into his crazy subversive ideology to the point he makes an entire town venerate him. The peak of a good snake oil salesman-pun intended.
>>153872914>I'm talking like, making Cobra into a "proper" terrorist organization or turning it into a cult. Torture, rape, mass casualties, y'know.Outside of raping, you get most of the rest in the IDW1 GI Joe comics that ran from about 2009.I don't think Hasbro would let anyone do a "the real bad guys are us" story with the Joes, and rightly so.
>>153856357G.I. Joe was doing fine sales wise and was die hard until about 2001~2003 when it became very hard to keep the military motif for a kids show, they tried with some successes but they were to big a target to make military toys for kids and even the later successes were leaned into adults tastes of the old show, even now it hangs on the sales and nearly 40yo men. >>153857099>1993. Now, the Street Fighter figures might've contributed to that, but point stands that even with no cartoon at the timethe DiC series was still in very hard first-run syndication as they did make new episodes until the start of 1992but sadly it was almost certainly the SF figures as the profits nose dive in 94. >>153866144>>153866181They weren't the only company that had a sea of toys for their cartoon to sell, even within Hasbro the other shows like Transformers their seemed to be a sense of key figures that don't get shafted or randomly tossed around.
>>153872727I love the stock Cobra trooper. They are the perfect mook.
>>153858746The animated D&D cartoon is like DC's Wonder Woman comics where everyone seem to like them but very few people hold any memory of what was in the show or what happened
>>153867857>>153872565more so in this upside down pyramid market where it's just older men nearing/in their 40s. Those that wanted 3.75 have 4 decades worth of goods to collect and in most cases they likely already have so the 6inch lie is just "new hat" energy to keep these long buying fans, well, buying.
>>153848253The Cold War ended. It's easy to believe Cobra is a threat when Cobra, really, is how Russians did Communism worldwide. In the 90s can't have GI Joes do the LA Riots or drugs, and after 9/11 the world got too real. The entire concept behind GI Joe only works if your enemy is basically not a religion, city gangs or nazis that get people scared in real life and become difficult to write patriotic stories about that don't become jingoistic right wing slop.GI Joe is just funner when the bad guys are just communists or stand-ins for communists because, when they're killed, blown up or arrested we are not and don't have any sympathy for them. The same for James Bond.
Cobra girlsyeh!
>>153872727I’ve always looked at it as Vipers were Cobra Troopers who were promoted.
>>153875067But G.I.Joe did go after drugs in the 1990s with their Drug Elimination Force going after Headman and the Headhunters.
>>153875940Me too. Vipers are clearly specialist troops as opposed to the Troopers being basic infantry.
>>153875946Even Cobra was working with the Joes to shut down Headman, if only to rob his sacks of drug money for themselves and then they find out nothing's in those sacks but old newspaper.
>>153872914I think the IDW series had chunks of that sans the rape. Even the Larry Hama run has Cobra dabbling with gun running and bioweapons, though IIRC any ethnic tensions are usually done by local despots or 3rd party groups.
>>153872727Cobra troopers are the basic grunts who later graduate into Vipers, Eels, and the other Cobra troopers.
>>153876860If your extra loyal to Cobra, you get promoted to the Crimson Guard. It will suck that your cover is being either an charted accountant or business executive, and having weird acrobatic twins as your bosses, but hey, you'll be entitled to union benefits!
>>153877061There was one CG who ended as an air traffic controller. Personally, I'd sign up with the Iron Grenadiers
>>153877084>"Iron Grenadiers, huh? Didn't you guys know the Kaiser is kaput?"
>>153877190>>153877084And that's how the 6th Cobra Civil War started
>GI Joe>Action Force>Cobra>MARS/Iron Grenadiers/Clan McCullen>Arashikage>Cobra-La>Dreadnoks>Revanche>SKAR>IRON Army (no relation to Destro)>Red Shadows>Headman's Drug CartelAny other groups I missed? I feel like I'm missing someone.
>>153877919there's enough to do the G.I Joe version of this meme
>>153877919The Coil
>>153878264>Rest is mental illnessI'm fine with the original Predacon, Maximal, and Unicron crests.
Does Cobra officially have an ideology? I know Buzz Dixon had a story in mind for a philosopher who came up with the ideology before being usurped and imprisoned by Cobra Commander, but that never happened. And I know in the comics Cobra started by criticizing both big business and big government, but what about the specific principles behind their ideology?
>>153880316No. They didn't want to bring up comparisons to any real life group, as I recall.
>>153880316Make money, fuck bitches, world domination, become the bully.
>>153870577>I know it's divisive and I know it couldn't work in most iterations of GI Joe outside of that cartoon, but I've always liked Cobra-La, and way it just suddenly comes out of nowhere is part of that appeal. Not many things even attempt that sort of sudden genre shift where you're in a horror movie now.It is worth noting that cartoon regularly went into that territory. They had ghosts, aliens, time travel, Egyptian gods, Lovecraft monsters. I never understood why people acted like Cobra-La was such a shift for the series.
>>153880395Isn’t Cobra-La part of the comic now as sort of a Scientology-like Xenu story? Where it isn’t real but part of their scheme to indoctrinate people?
Forgive me if this was already covered and I missed it, but I think a problem with G.I. Joe is nobody knows which direction to take it. There's people who loathe the sci-fi aspects and think it should be a realistic military series about soldiers fighting terrorists, and people who think that there isn't an interest in military and war and it would be better off going into a fantasy aspect. It's a neither fish nor fowl situation.
>>153880395I think it was them being the tea of masters of Cobra made some dislike it, but as you said the Sunbow Joes dealt with the Gods of Egypt, time travel, clones, and everything else. The ones who read the comic general dislike them for breaking the relative realism despite things like clones and later Revanche AI
>>153880316at the beginning of the comics it's said that their main objective was instigating WW3 and then dominate the world from the ruins left behind but I think that was never mentioned ever again iirc
>>153880520Was that it? I know there was one milita group that wanted to do that too in the first dozen or so issues of the Marvel run.
>>153880447MGS and even some Modern Warfare games basically lean to a modernized version of what 80's GI Joe was. But you have to commit to that modernization and not half assing it.
>>153880665>Kojima GI Joe gameI'd pay to see that.
>>153880445That was IDW. Skybound Cobra-la is basically exactly the same as in the movie.
>>153880395I think if you took a poll most of the die hard haters of Cobra-La would be people who mostly/only read the comics>>153880447I think you have to have some sci-fi tech, that's kind of what makes it cool and it's been there since the beginning. But yeah there's some guys who don't even like the ninja stuff. Everybody has their own idea of what's a bridge too far. The thing with Cobra-La is it's more fantasy so that's an easy place to draw the line. Some people hate the psychic stuff like Crystal Ball and the new DIRE Tech even though back then that was more like sci-fi and the military was researching it. I'm glad the people who like Cobra-La have the new Skybound series because before that they had literally nothing. Might as well give it a try
>>153880445IDW is the outliner in portarying Cobra-La in that regard. Like >>153880692 said, Skybound is playing Cobra La close to their debut with the only differnces thus far is Cobra Commander going rogue off the bat and their capture of Megatron. The Devil Due's Transformers vs GI Joe series had them work with Unicron, trading them Earth's human population to toil inside Unicron in exchange for dominion over the Earth. Then there's Koh-Buru-Lah from the Tom Scioli comic
>>153880738>NinjasTo me, that's where GI Joe jumped the shark. It felt like they were chasing the TMNT Ninja craze. Didn't they do a Street Fighter line too?>T. someone born in 1996
>>153880850Ninjas were in from day one. And yeah, Hasbro did the toys for the Street Fighter movie, but there was no crossover.
>>153880850I thought that Snake Eyes was the most popular Joe by a large margin?
>>153880876I guess I should have clarified, the Ninja Force years. Storm Shadow, Snake Eyes, and Jinx were fine, but the rest came out like a clown car.
>>153880951>G.I. Joe Clown Force
>>153880738Even the comic wasn't fully spared from Hasbro's demands to make everything more sci-fi and cartoony. Hama did his best with what he was told to include, but things like requiring sudden crossovers with the Transformers didn't make things easy for his writing style.
>>153880480I can see why people take issue with that. Retcons always piss people off for the same reason writers love them so much. It's a way to reach into previous work and say, "what you saw really isn't what you saw".I'm always torn on it because I do like the idea of Cobra starting with Cobra Commander. On the other hand, the horror fan in me likes the idea of this horrific thing lurking in the background over everything. I would love a story that reveals Cobra-La started as some kind of bio-experiment that Cobra thought they scuttled long ago, but has been still festering and growing in secret. Cobra kinda knows there's this...thing that has been building on its own that we get hints of it every now and then. Finally, comes they point where everyone encounters this buried society of biological horrors and it's just total nightmare inducing shit.
>>153880850The ninja craze predated TMNT by quite a few years.t. get-off-my-lawn-tier old guy
>>153881166Funny enough, he flat out refused to include Cobra-La.
>>153881578Even Hasbro admitted Serpentor and Cobra-La was a misstep, which is likely why they didn't argue when Hama killed off Serpentor and CC sealed all those loyal to him (mainly the failed gimmick toys like Raptor) in a volcano to starve to death
>>153881684See Serpentor is not that out of place to me, clones aren't too weird. The only thing that's a stretch is that they found guys like Genghis Khan's and Attila the Hun's bones to put in the soup
>>153881684But he was killing everyone in the bunker.General VoltarDr MindbenderZartanBillyFireflyInnocent casualties who just happened to be there like the Blind Master’s student Tyrone and the sea captain
>>153881288Yeah, that seems to go back with Godfrey Ho's ninja movies in the 1970's. I think those movies were the one of the main inspiration for Mortal Kombat.
>>153881852Yeah, I remember nobody has been able find Genghis Khan's tomb.
>>153882066>>153881288Really? Did not know that.>>153881852>>153882145I think Hama's explanation was that Cobra's own teams were just "that good" in locating them.
>>153878617I dunno Unicron getting an insignia seems kinda stupid. I guess it depends on if he’s a regular transformer or when he’s an actual god
>>153882066His Ninja films in the 70s were basically only known to martial arts fans, and they weren't very good. The big ninja craze of the early 80s didn't have a lot to do with Ho's movies, though he certainly cashed in as hard as he could.
>>153877190Is that middle guy Buzzer if he got a haircut and dressed like a normal adult?
>>153846561>Is there anyone who actually prefers the Joes over Cobra?Nope lol. Cobra had all the cool designs. The Joes were always>guy>guy>other guyCobra had like>FLAME THROWER DUDE>ROBOT HOLOGRAM GUY>TECH HELMET GUY WITH ROCKET LAUNCHER JETPACKERshit was so cashI had a HISS tank it was fuckin awesome
Of course the exception is Snake Eyes. Ask any man still in possession of both testicles>Who's your favorite J->Snake Eyes.It's built into the backbrain, we don't need to think about it.
>>153874587There's a great episode where a nazi luftwaffen pilot falls in love with the black jungle bunny. He's a pretty decent guy too. Media sure was different back then.>what if both sides of a war were full of.. human beings?of course I suppose the counterpoint to that is>Dungeons and Dragons?
>>153884887Reminds me more of Bobby Hill.
I like Lade Jaye a LOT now as an adult. And I mean A LOT.
>>153865855Can we remember to forget the entire "Extreme" epoch of cartoons candy bars and soft drinks?
>>153885329Shipwreck for me.Or Roadblock.But I will acknowledge that Snake Eyes is the face of the franchise
>>153885420
>>153885515>loli and ENF in the same episodesomething for everyone
>>153885515>>153885420Please tell me you’ve seen the Destro’s family castle episode?
>>153885567Oh yes. my chud dudebro watch party group goes through all the greats
>>153885567Oh yes
>>153885615Wow. Herb Trimpe does not know how to write women.
>>153885329Flint was my favorite. "He rocked that beret and rocked Lady Jaye"
>>153885669that was the old gag where you draw sexy women but have them complain to show what a male ally you were.
>>153885669>>153885699It was based, poor little femmies having a meltdown lmao.
>>153885409>>"I wanna be in Cobra, dad!">"That boy ain't right."kek
Why was there never a Cobra Executioner character?That would be based.
>>153885567
>>153849105>>153849200>>153851425>>153851489>>153851572>>153849374>>153849418>>153849488>>153849544They had a new chuckles doll at target today. The figure wouldnt ring up tho at first and i had to tell the hispanic wagie the price at the self checkout counter
>>153885819>Tomax and Xamot buy out Strickland>Dale and Bill accidentally join the Dreadnoks
>>153886042He was so undercover, he wouldn't ring up.
>>153885926All of Cobra were executioners
>>153881852Was Serpentor a hapa?
>>153885329My favorite joe is probably shipwreck still. Hes too funny and cool, he reminds me alot of brave and the bold aquaman in some ways. Also lady jaye is hotter then scarlett
>>153886878>He was so undercover, he wouldn't ring up.Fucking kek. It didnt even occur to me how in character it was for a chuckles figure to be invisible within the targets check out computers
>>153887024NTA But in my headcanon serpentor should look mediterranean like the emperor of mankind from 40k does
>>153885615>complaining about "muh objectification muh sexism" shitWhy have women always hated looking sexy for men? Why are they always stuck up prudes?
>>153887556>>153887024He's a mix of everything.
>>153875067>The Cold War ended.The Cold War never ended. Marxist infiltration of the west proves it; the tactics of war just changed.And that's ultimately why GI Joe is in the void it is: it didn't change with war.
>>153887683False, sex-positive feminism is a whole thing. Truth is, it's really fuckin' complicated
>>153887683That page was made by men for men to fetishize the helplessness of women being made to be sex objects despite their petty objections, because deep down you know they love it. It's pretty based.
>>153888121>muh cultural marxismFuck off
>>153889810Why? He's right. What's your counterargument? Because without one, you make me inclined to believe you're defaulting on the discussion.
>>153889968NTA, plz take it to /pol/ with that horseshit
>>153890081Why? He's right, AND was simply stating an *on-topic fact* related to the current discussion (a military cartoon with a political terror group). You're the one who had a sudden freakout.Elaborate, or cry impotently (I know which one you'll pick, because you don't HAVE a counterargument)
>>153885615I like it when female heroes reluctantly have to do sexy stuff for their job. It's the right amount of humiliation. Nothing like trading in self respect for saving the day.
>>153890840This. Although I like it even better when the heroine isn't embarrassed at all to fight with "the girls" hanging out. Very rare though
>>153886042Man, Super7 is kinda doing a good job. I should really get money.
>>153853323I thought it was a bad name too until I read some of his comics and it clicked and started to seem badass. It's like how there's a metal band named Rainbow
orange Heat Viper was MC in my childhood guys stories (we called all our toys "guys", cause they were like 80% gi joe but a few other random stuff thrown in there like TMNT or whatever)
>>153880316>Does Cobra officially have an ideology?In the cartoon "taking over the world"In the comics "Greed, ambition and ruthlessness"There's no real political ideology, and intentionally so. The closest you get is some of the filecards Larry Hama wrote, where the Baroness started out as a student radical who escalated to terrorism, and Buzzer was a an extreme left-winger obsessed with biker gangs until he joined one.
>>153846561I never liked this show. Always put me to sleep.
>>153881199In fairness, the cartoon opens with Cobra already existing and in conflict with GI Joe, and never really gives you any details on how it got started or who Cobra Commander really was. The movie filling in all those blanks isn't really a retcon because in that continuity there wasn't any previously established lore for it to overturn.It's only an issue if you go in assuming they're working to the same backstory and lore as the comics, backstory that to a large extent hadn't even been revealed in the comics by that point.And in the cartoon, Cobra is founded by Cobra Commander, and nobody else there knows anything about Cobra-La at all.
>>153881684Hasbro permitted Hama and DiC to both take Serpentor out of play after his toy was no longer on sale, and there were newer Cobra Commander figures to promote instead, but Hasbro seem to have required both the comic and the cartoon to set up that Serpentor could return if Hasbro chose to later make a new toy of him, which wouldn't have been that out of place for the direction the line took in the 90s.>>153885926Technically that's THE SAW-Viper, isn't it?
>>153887556>serpentor>like the emperor of mankind from 40k>various comic continuities where Serpentor starts manifesting psychic abilities>Devil's Due costume is a bit like proto-power armorHmmmm
When anime first started becoming mainstream one of the big arguments was how much deeper anime storylines were than American "red laser vs blue laser cartoons" (and they were right). But coming back to GI Joe I'm noticing so much great stuff that went over my head as a kid. It's packed with all kinds of little rich details that are entertaining to adults. Not like super deep or anything, but the animators definitely knew what they were doing (even when they were Japanese).
>>153883371Ed Boon mentioned he and the team were big fans of Kung Fu films and often when to Chinese stores that had videos and rented them.
I know one guy who definitely prefers cobrahttps://www.deviantart.com/covert-operations/gallery/74643233/scarlett-ii
>>153893165And to date, Serpentor has not seen any big push for revival from Hasbro, so yeah, it's pretty much a matter of everybody involved saying "let's not speak of him again".
>>153889968>>153890104Youre not right, samefag. Like the other anon said take it to /pol/ you bitch
>>153894231>still no counterargumentWhy are intellectual weak, uninformed people like this?
>>153893165>Technically that's THE SAW-Viper, isn't it?Not that anon, but isn't SAW Viper like, all purple?
>>153892078>orange Heat Viper was MC in my childhood guys stories Hes cool, my favorite gi joe figure was cobra commander after i started collecting the line after i saw rise of cobra in theaters, but i think my favorite viper was the techno viper i got in 2011 along with the zombie viper that dame out in the same year. Also they made a new heat viper figure in a two pack with blowtorch in 2014 as a toysrus exclusive. I got that one too back in TRU when it was still open>(we called all our toys "guys", cause they were like 80% gi joe but a few other random stuff thrown in there like TMNT or whatever)The fact you called your action figures as simply guys rather then just toys or figures reminded me of thishttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwtSIX9qOU&ra=m
>>153894250Says the slack jaw retard whinging about "muh liberals" in a thread about toy cartoons. The counter argument is that cultural marxism doesnt exist, so take your off topic temper tantrum about your retard politics somewhere else faggot.
>>153893669Gi joe was one of the most complex cartoons from the 1980s which is a big appeal to me and why its my favorite 80s cartoon. I think it was even more well written the G1 trasnformers was and i love that show too. The bar for quality back then for cartoons was very low (but still higher then the 1970s lmao) so im not saying that gi joe ARAH is on the level of batman the animated series or anything but for the era it came out in gi joe was peak of a supreme nature.
>>153891413Super7s non-reaction figures have spotty quality control so be warned. Also as much as i love new O-ring figures i still contest that they are overpriced but everything super7 makes is overpriced. And iirc the new chuckles is out of stock at super7s website the the best bet to actually get him for retail price is to check target. Targets doing a reset for their toy section may 31 and im pretty sure the chuckles figure i got last night was meant for that reset since they also had out a bunch of new spider man toys for the new movie, those they def werent allowed to sell until june 1st. So if you check in a few days chuckles may be at your local target too.
I’ve been meaning to get into G.I. Joe for a bit. Do you guys have any recommendations on where to start?
>>153894898I WISH there were Target stores in my country. I had been eyeing more other stuff like the Python Patrol Cobra Commander, but yeah, from what I gathered you really need some spending cash to get anything from Super7 (or any o-ring stuff, these days, at any rate).
>>153895541The sunbow cartoon is peak pulpy action. Ive been reading the mini series comic G.I. Joe: cobra this morning which stars chuckles and thats as dark as ive ever seen the franchise go.>>153895578Python patrol cobra commander was meant as a target exclusive but ended up being released on super7s website instead. Its sold out their now unfortunately.
>>153895764Thanks I’ll give them a look and just go from there I guess
>>153895906Geez IMAGINE that Scarlet Playboy photoshoot.
>>153894091Oh God, you're obviously That Guy from /toy/ making the exact same posts, aren't you?That Hasbro never forced Serpentor as the lead villain again is superfluous to the fact that they made sure both the comic and cartoon wrote him out in a way where he could be brought back if they later wanted him back.Some iteration of Serpentor has shown up in most comic continuities since then, and new toys were made in the 2000s and again for Classified, this isn't a character Hasbro has decided to bury and never speak of again. Most new iterations of GI Joe after the early 90s just never really last long enough to get to any threat escalation villains or any secondary villain factions, and as was brought up on /toy/, the Valor vs Venom era had Venomous Maximus as a similar concept to Serpentor, but with DNA from animals instead of military leaders.You personally may hate Serpentor and wish Hasbro never mentioned him again, but Hasbro don't even feel that way about Cobra-La. Even the recent videogame had a sequel-bait tease for Serpentor.
>>153895906Michael Bay becoming the TF guy instead of the G.I Joe is the biggest waste of potential ever. The franchise is every single thing that he loves:>explosive>militaristic>patriotic>full of hot babes
>>153896253The irony is that the GI Joe movies got to be less pro-Military than the TF ones because they got to use fake tech and not need to beg the military for the use of their tech. The TF movies stop dead to shop off random military tech that isn't even a Transformer alt-mode or just stuff like wingsuits, the GI Joe movies can have the president being an undercover Cobra member that manages to kill most of the Joes.
>>153896447I havent seen gi joe rise of cobra since i was 13 and im afraid to rewatch it again because i dont want to taint my fond memories of that movie back when i thought it was the coolest movie ever because i know now that the movie was fucking shit.
>>153849366why do you suppose little boys are predisposed towards faceless, uniformed paramilitary types? Just seems like a weird thing for everyone to be into.
>>153897450Because theyre cooler. When i got into gi joe as a tween in the late 2000s i almost always bought the cobra vipers cuz not only did i already think villains were cooler, but most of the cobra soldiers are generic grunts in cool armor rather then some normal looking loser with bland outfit and a boring face that looks derpy. Even the named cobra characters were typically cooler then the joes themselves were like tomax and xamot or dr mindbender.
The other Joes are just these so it's less embarrassing when Snake Eyes solos all of Cobra and gives Storm Shadow wet willy.
