What an interesting video. I always love when children's media has adult themes. No kid wants to read a book about fascism, but give them a comic book and they can learn valuable lessons and maybe connect the dots when they're older.
@@c3alohaBecause parents did not use their children’s interest as a teachable moment. Consider the effort deployed by the videographer to connect the dots for us. That kind of analysis is not innate.
My parents hated that I loved the toy line, cartoons and comics. As a post Depression era WW2 generation I can see how that makes sense. It also makes sense how this franchise still maintains some appeal. The kids who were raised on the 80's toys are still hooked for more than the obvious reasons of nostalgia, there were cultural signs that resonated from our parent's generation and then were resurrected for the Cold War generation. Even today there is an essence of modern society and conflict found in the GI Joe vs Cobra theme. When you think about the state of modern politics it may become more difficult to discern who is playing the heroes from the villains anymore.
Spot on, I was the perfect age to be absolutely hooked on the toys and cartoon, and then by the comic when I was a young adult and it was collected and rereleased/continued. It helps that Cobra *always* had the cooler stuff and a super cool logo (much like the Decepticons).
It's funny just how interesting and thought provoking, and timeless an 80s cartoon meant for kids could be, and still have potential for more to this day and probably beyond, g.i joe may waver in popularity, but will never lose its relevance. A big reason why I'm a fan to this day. Keep up the videos man you make some good stuff.
Never thought I'd see a disseration on COBRA that hits hard and true but here it is. COBRA being essentially born from disenfranchisement from the American Dream TM and radicalizing those who were burned by it makes it a fascinating parallel with the Joes who are as the tagline goes, "Real American Heroes". Whoever wrote that original run of comics was onto something excellent.
Thank Larry, Hama. He did a majority of the run back in the eighties and nineties until it was discontinued, he then came back in the early 2010s to relaunch GI Joe once again
It's a shame the "good guys" suck so much. Fascinating as the bad guys are, I've exhausted myself being a contrarian. I'm tired of always playing the bad guy. I don't actually like being a bastard, but the bastards are the only ones who ever seem to get anything done!!! No matter how foolish, twisted, or even straight evil the villain is; they are infinitely more interesting and carismatic than the cardboard cutouts defending the status queue. Villains drive the plot by pushing the conflict towards a resolution. The resolution might be them getting thrown into a volcano of thier own creation, but at least they died doing something: As opposed to the heroes, who start every story sitting around with thier thumb up thier ass, only taking action when the villain forces them to, and only going so far as to remove the villain so they can return to putting thier thumb up thier ass. The moment a hero says, something like "lets NOT return to the status queue", "Maybe we were wrong for allowing this conflict to happen in the first place" "maybe we can take this oppurtunity to change the world" the moment they do that, they break the episodic formula, and more importantly break the contract they have with the publisher to produce x number of episodes to air on TV or print. Or worse; they become the next villain. A perfect methaphor for the real-world villains; the corpo overlords who enforce the status queue to preserve thier rank and position, despite haveing long since lost thier edge, resporting to increasingly vile methods to compensate for thier inablity to adapt or grow. The very thing that causes every single conflict in fiction: unresolved conflicts always escalate, and it's always the people in power who refuse (or are too incompetant) to address these conflicts. In that way, the good guys are always the villains because no matter how cartoonishly evil and flawed the antagonist is, the heroes are always responsible for enforcing this mediocre tyranny. Thier actions always set the stage for the next conflict. We're supposed to forgive them of thus. becuase they have good intensions, or some arbitrary moral code that nessesitates evil. But regardless of what excuse you use, the heroes never win. They just reset the cycle over and over. If it's not evil, at the very least it's pathetic. Relateing this back to the real world (cuz that's the only reason we care about fiction) The cloest analog to this, are the cops enforcing unjust laws, the mercinary fighting to protect thier employer's interests, or the emergency responder simply patching holes to keep the ship afloat. They aren't superemen, they can't save everyone, but what makes them lame is that they don't even try. Maybe when they start out, they might try. But they quickly learn they can't do it alone, so they accept mediocrity, and just put in the minimal effort. They show up to a crime scene, a fire, a car crash, a slum, village elder with an AK, warzone, and they let out a sigh as they go through the motions, emotionally detatched from the whole thing. Compare that to how a villain approaches a dynamic situation. A villain might throw themself into the burning building just to spite God! Walk up the village elder, grab the elder's gun and pull the muzzle toward his own face like a suicidal lunatic and demand the elder shoot him or fuck off. Villains don't follow the rules. Do you want to know what a good cop is? A cop who only enforces the law when he believes he should. Good guys always suck because they only fight bad guys who break the rules, they don't fight the bad guys who make the rules. The villains always break the rules, and consequently, this puts them at odds with the people who make the rules, and it just so happens that the most pervasive evil in the real world today, comes from the people makeing the rules.
@@CappnRob The Joes are exemplars. There's no Joe Rambo among them, from what I recall. There was a big sprawling heap of them as every little military and paramilitary specialization had to have exactly one Joe. There was an international Joe band for a while, I think. And their wonky Soviet counterparts, the October Guard.
@@SusCalvin oh yeah the Joes themselves are generally stand up guys I just love the irony of their sworn enemy being a creation of the failure of the American Dream lol
@@CappnRob There was a few episodes and arcs where the Soviet sphere got to be an antagonist. One where some Joes fail to infiltrate an unspecified Soviet satellite. Now that I think of it, there's a chance John Rambo would be standing at a Cobra recruitment drive.
The Cobra of Larry Hama's comics was simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. It was solely about greed rather than any sort of religious ideology which made them more like 1920s Chicago gangsters than actual terrorists but they used the symbolism of revolution and fascism as a means rather to gain capital. The Baroness was all about the anti-capitalist revolution but became very disillusioned and left with her lover, Destro, who formed the Iron Grenadiers; an extraterritorial arms sales organization based in Scotland. Oddly, Cobra was anti-drugs and took out a drug syndicate led by the Headman as he was addicting Cobra civilians to junk. There was also a Cobra accountant who also raised birds of prey and thus dressed like a bird to make them happy.
About the anti-drugs, its probably from the nazi, who disliked drunkenness and recreational drug use, but did not have a problem to give its troops panzer-chocolate (Methamphetamine) to make them fight harder and longer.
@@wesleystreet Cobra was out and about selling weapons. Usually in such a way that a place would destabilize and either grow more dependent on Cobra or become a Cobra client. That different parts of a dictatorship gets a license to pursue weird pet projects and to build personal little fiefs happens. You can't really tell Himmler to stop chasing the hammer of Mjolnir. What are you gonna do, fire him and his security system?
One part of the comic I recall is a scene where after plot releases Cobra Comander and Destro from imprisonment, Destro asks CC if he knows how to hot wire a car, and CC basically goes, "Hot wire? Come on we're heading to the nearest car dealership. I'll show you how a pro steals a car." Cut to them driving down the highway in a sportscar with CC explaining how he got the dealer to tangle up the paperwork so thoroughly that it would be at least a week till the car could be reported as missing. Also he had the paperwork to drive across state lines.
@@11C1P You're one of those good people who follows traffic laws. I can vouch you will need that paperwork when you get pulled over. Something tells me CC is the kind of guy who gets pulled over.
@@Plaprad Been pulled over lots of times, only paperwork I needed is the same paperwork I need if I get pulled over in my home state, Driver license, registration & proof of insurance.
I seem to recall that a big part of Hama's GI Joe development was that he originally pitched a Nick Fury/SHIELD revival, which didn't take, but when he got involved with the new GI Joe toyline, he repurposed a lot of his SHIELD ideas, so SHIELD became the GI Joe organization while Hydra became Cobra. I forget how it all fits in detail, but anyway, Hama is a very good writer.
Fun fact, my father not only grew up on the OG big GIJoe toys, he had the famed and desired (as I’m told at least) Mobile Command Center toy. Any time he or I mentioned that to any GI-Joe fan they look at us with shock and envy.
There is a G.I. Joe tabletop RPG published by Renegade Game Studios. When I was stationed in Germany in '88 & '89, I tried to get our unit to use a rallying cry of "Yo SWO!". SWO stands for "Staff Weather Office(r)". We were Air Force weather support for the US Army 3rd ID. Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. The other half is unfettered violence.
gotta luv them 'kinder gentler' multi NAtionalistic ZIonists - and bow-down and bend-over for their kosher-supremacist HELLBENT for total world domination - OR ELSE - they'll social-distance and cancel you for good. them proudly wickedly WOKE insider cheater-class not-see flunky minion INFLUENCERS - AND their greedy-sadistic master-minded big-tech god-fraud deceptacon hex-nut kingpimps think they are CRAFTY enough to schmuck the whole world into going to WAR against everything pure and natural and good - but they DEFINITELY got another thing coming ... so basically we better REJOICE ! like we ain't got no choice ! and nevertheless redeem our original intelligently-designed goddesspeed again regardless yawl !
This was great.!! I thoroughly enjoyed this.. I was born in 83, my best memories were G.I. Joes, and COBRA COMMANDER, is and always will be the bad ass villain of all time..
Your explanation of COBRA is one of the reasons many people like me did not like the First order from Star Wars. As a terrorist organization, it makes sense that that would be powerful and a challenge to our heroes, but relatively easy to beat. It makes no sense why they are depicted exactly the same as the galactic empire, more powerful somehow, and still relatively easy to beat.
This is great- your emphasis on Cobras infiltration tactics is awesome! They've always been so underrated on that, likely because it's only ever emphasized by Hama in the comic run, but it's one of the coolest factors about their lore
My favourite version of Cobra Commander comes from GI Joe: Renegades. It a prequel that actually tries to explain Cobra's limitless funding and decade-plus technological lead on the U.S. military. The idea of Cobra as an even more evil Wal-Mart or Amazon covertly shipping weapons to the back rooms of fortified warehouses and building tanks in underground bunkers in preparation for a day when they cement control of the global economy with a military overthrow of the United States is my perfect blend of unhinged. Cobra can be thwared but never defeated because Cobra has already *consumed and replaced* too much machinery essential to the global economy. The reality that billionaires have turned the world into an idle game where wealth has to be increasingly expressed in scientific notation just feels like a complete lack of imagination and ambition in comparison.
In the UK, the GI Joe action series was known as Action Force and was altered slightly to reflect a more British-like military. Their initial baddie was a guy called Baron Ironblood and his army of Red Shadows. Baron Ironblood (for some inexplicable reason) decided to dismantle his army of Red Shadows and rebrand himself as Cobra.
No, Action Force was a separate toyline and comic (but based on Action Man, which was a licensed version of American toy G.I. Joe) before the two properties were merged together. And Action Force was international with operatives from all over the place.
As an 80's kid GI Joe will always have a special place in my heart. I see some similarities between Cobra and the SPECTER organization in James Bond. Both were created in part to give the protagonist an apolitical opponent who looks bad at first glance (cartoonishly so) and does not marry the story to current events. Ironically that might have made the villains more adaptable to different periods than the heroes.
Cobra is easily in my top 10 favorite villains of all time list, especially the one from those Marvel 1980s/90s comics. Wish they'd reissue those in print collections like they did with a bunch of older Punisher comics. Now if only we could've gotten a great GI Joe video game for current consoles and pc. That last one was bad...
The comics have been reissued multiple times over the last twenty-ish years. The new license holder (Skybound Entertainment) has stated that they intend to reissued *ALL* of the comics from all the various runs (Marvel, Devil's Due, IDW) so if ya keep an eye out you should be able to get them easily, it's just a matter of time. Also you're right about Cobra being a top ten antagonist.
Cobra as they are depicted on the cartoon show on tv, incompetent louses. Cobra as they are depicted in the comic, competent and deadly, and only the plot armor can save the heroes, and sometimes Cobra do overcome the plot armor.
He is 100% right. I read the comics back and forth as a tween and that's it. Larry Hama got the job nobody wanted (to create the lore for a silly toy soldier line) and created something that had certain roots and made sense out of it.
Corba was always my favorite faction. When i was a child, i collected Joes with over a hundred figures and purchased more weapons packs than any kid should. I miss those days.
Great commentary man! I posted on Facebook just now on how cartoons for kids aren’t this deep. But we live in a time where kid’s entertainment is very fractured. If you watch mainstream tv, kids shows are really neutered. But this is time where their are hundreds of outlets, so if your a kid that likes cartoons, you can find animated versions of Bat Man: Killing Joke, Neon Genesis Evangelone, or whatever. When I was a kid, you only had a few places that put kid’s entertainment out their so all the kids saw the same shows, so the stuff I watched was watched by every kid in my cohort. That makes a difference. I suppose that the internet now ensures that after a certain point kids can watch anything they want, ranging from Mandolorian to ISIS recruitment videos, but a lot of parents might steer them to Magic School Bus or Disney shit. We got stuff that was the moral equivalent of Captain Crunch Cereal and that was great. We got to figure out our morals outside of a carefully controlled scheme. Shit my parents let me watch slasher movies. I like that freedom of letting kids explore the world on their own and not trying to design their minds for maximum productivity.
Will you ever cover "The Brotherhood of Nod" from the Command & Conquer Series. It too, predicted a lot of the modern things we are dealing with now despite being in a alternate sci-fi timeline.
Not anytime soon. I haven't played much Command and Conquer and I try to stick to lore I've lived in for awhile and really know. But C&C is high on the list for next time I go on a retro gaming bender.
@@feralhistorian Any thoughts to doing an analysis of the mentality of the faux revolutionary rich brats of the RAF cadres in the movie " The Baader Meinhof Complex ".
On a related tangent, I'd recommend Captain Power and Exosquad, if you've never seen them. The former is a post-apocalyptic Saturday morning live-action series with some of the first CGI characters to ever hit TV. Tagline: "When man fought machine... and machine won." Written by JMS several years prior to B5. The latter is basically WWII in space, or GI Joe with spaceships and NO EJECTION SEATS. Seriously, ships and mechs blow up all over the place with lots of people on board. Named characters die *on screen*. The lead villain slowly turns more and more into late-war Hitler, complete with the bombastic speeches. It's a wonder how they ever got all that stuff past the censors, even if you allow for the fact that it was a '90s show and there weren't as many restrictions on kids' entertainment as in the '80s. I SHALL INSCRIBE YOUR NAMES IN STONE.
Fascinating video. It was a great take on an incredible cartoon/ comic that was so important in my childhood. I look forward to seeing more like this. Thanks.
80's kid here. Cobra had the best gear, coolest uniforms. They only had the one hot chick though, The Baroness, whereas GI Joe had at least two Scarlet and Lady J. This is a good analysis.
Whenever I think if Cobra from G.I. Joe, I am reminded of Amtrak's "Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR)" program and the picture of the officer dressed in black with a bump helmet and face mask, and thinking to myself: "They really didn't think this name through very well, did they?"
history Note. Most folks at Marvel hated doing these comics. BUT the writer of GI Joe was a vietnam vet and jumped at the chance to do this comic and it was the best IP comic EVER. Seriously there was one comic where Snake Eyes and Stormshadow just ninja killed a entire island with zero text. All art to point out as ninja they make ZERO Sound.
Honestly, classic Star Trek, Top Gun and GI Joe were so formative on my young psyche in the 1980s and I always wanted to join the Canadian Forces. It took the long road to finally get here, but I joined at 45, fulfilling that running desire in my life to serve.
Though this cartoon was infamous for being a half-hour commercial for the toy line, "G. I. Joe" nonetheless impressed me with the level of character backstory detail that made the cartoon heroes and villains much more than simple . . . well, typical cartoon heroes and villains. But I had no idea that the backstory was this incredibly deep. Though the "G. I. Joe" cartoon was "after my time;" when I was in grade school, we would watch a live-action Japanese import titled, "Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot," that featured similar themes and flamboyant, over-the-top villains - and a special organization created to fight them - all with highly developed backstories. The good guys were a G.I. Joe / Megaforce-like group called "Unicorn," while the bad guys - an invading alien terrorist group (who used human "Janissaries,") called "The Gargoyle Gang" in the show - was very much like COBRA, (and, along with Marvel's HYDRA, may have even inspired it.) The Supreme Commander of Gargoyle was a Cthulhu-like being called Emperor Guillotine, and he probably gave more Boomer kids nightmares than Freddy Krueger did to the kids of Generation X. Please consider applying your research and analytical skills to a study of "Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot," as a future project. Thanks for posting this! 663rd Like.
I was born in the early 90's so GI-Joe was not in my headspace as a kid. But the movies made me in look up the comics because I felt this had to be better written somewhere. It was. That said I think to myself that the sillyness of the cartoon deters a lot away of the grimness of the concepts. Like the not so subtle omages and refrences to Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft's works in the occult shenanigans that showed up every once in while. Cobra as the military arm of a centuries spaning cult of worshipers and human agents of distant Alien Gods like Yig and Cthulhu if done by a horror writer with a an enthusiasm of Military Sci-Fi could make nightmares and insanity of the Cobra-G.I.Joe Wars. Like the United States and their allies becoming aware of these ancient conspiracies and secret wars between Lovecraftian Cult's and Cobra somehow came on top has more control over financial and political powers than they can imagine. And now Cobra aim's to take control of the Earth and rule as the human agents of a Alien Empire beyond human comprehension, believing that what that Empire can give to humanity makes all other religions and beliefs meaningless in comparison.
I have seen a few notorious Cobra schemes shady groups have looked to pull off in reality. That Larry Hama was onto something. Great content. Thank you.
Tell me you live in Colorado without telling me you live in Colorado. Great video, I’m having a mid-life crisis in my late 40’s and have been doing a G.I.Joe revival with the Classified series and compendium comics. The wife tolerates it at the moment, but man, I’m loving reliving my childhood. Keep it up, I enjoy the content
5:28 OH I love that line. It's often the Revolutionary who calls their opposition Reactionary, but when you look at Revolutionaries, they are almost always "THE REACTIONARY" force. No better example than the Short German Civil War that happened when the Weimar Republic was established. The Social Democratic Party took power, and wanted to install a Democratic Government. The more Marxist elements of the SPD split away, into two different factions, the Independent Socialist, and the Communist, and both joined forced and tried to overthrow the newly Founded Weimar Republic. They viewed the leaders of the SPD were not Revolutionary enough, and had stolen their "GLORIOUS" revolution out from under their feet and have betrayed the working class. After the original attempt to take the capital of Berlin failed the Independent Socialist negotiated a truce with the Social Democratic, but the Communist, also known as the Spartacus refused to Negotiate at all. Well the result was pretty lets say, obvious being the Army had the back of the Social Democrats. What is funny is the Marxist since had tried to portray the Spartacus uprising as a "peaceful" revolution in spite of the fact they were armed to the teeth. This same scenario also played out in Bavaria months later. They called the Weimar Republic the Reactionary Force in that conflict despite it was these revolutionaries who tried to overthrow an already established revolutionary government. Fun and interesting fact. Sepp Dietrich, Adolf Hitler and Julius Schreck were official members of the Communist government in Bavaria in early 1919. Though Hitler held a very low rank, being an elected representative of his garrison. But I find it interesting the most famous Waffen SS General was once a Communist, and so was Julius Schreck the founder of the SS.
The whole Weimar period is its own interesting mess that defies a lot of modern categories. Hitler, Dietrich etc weren’t so much “communists” as anti-democrats and disgruntled veterans caught up in events. Modern thinking tends to look at Nazism and communism as polar opposites but if we look at that period from 1918 to about 1925 we can see Nazism form as a sort of mutant offshoot of radical communist and socialist ideas, taking the pieces that they could use and discarding what they didn’t want, mix in a lot of the Freikorps militarism and sense of betrayal about the war, and it starts to look like a story of men looking for answers, quickly deciding that communism wasn’t it, but being flung off in a new direction by it. Their early involvement with the SPD does give some insight into the time.
@@feralhistorian Personally for Hitler I think it may go much deeper but it's sadly speculation. Reason I believe this is because he was a known Patron of Cafe Central in Vienna Austria. In his youth, which was a major Socialist hot spot. There has been much discussion on where Hitler learned his energetic, emotion infusing style of Speech. Being nearly identical to how Social Revolutionaries would give public speeches. I personally believe it was from his time in Cafe Central. There is evidence that during his time in Vienna Hitler had met Lenin. The degree of their relationship is a mystery though. Hitler himself completely white washed his past including controlling his own narrative which for how foggy his past is, many still cite Mein Kampf about his past. Which if we're honest can not be trusted in the slightest. But to me there is enough to claim he was a Marxist before WWI. Why he chose to not aid the Communist in Bavaria could very well be because the Great War turned him into a Nationalist. Despite his Socialist tendencies. It was only a few months after the Communist were defeated that he joined the German Worker's Party as a spy originally. A Racist, Nationalist, Anti-Communist Socialist party which would captivate him. Most of the cornerstones of Nazism were pretty much already there before he joined the party. TIKhistory describes the Nazis as Racial Socialist. Which fits quite well. If the Race is the Collectivist Group you build your Socialism around. Of course you're not going to keep all ideas lets say Marxist Socialist support.
There’s plenty of evidence that Hitler was a nationalist before the Great War, not least his going out of his way to avoid serving in the Austrian Army and instead enlisting with Germany. But I think it’s clear that he was heavily influenced by the socialist/communist movements swirling around pre-war Vienna and especially post-war Germany. In grossly simplistic terms, Nazi ideology is a fusion of equal parts radical socialism, freikorps militarism, and esoteric/occult nationalism. I’m 99% certain that the whole “Hitler met Lenin” story is complete fiction. The only evidence I’ve ever seen cited is the famous chessmatch drawing, which depicts a guy that looks like 1930s Hitler (in 1909) playing against a guy with a full head of hair when photos of Lenin from the period show him clearly going bald. Now I concede it’s possible that they could have met, but we have no reason to think they did. One of the problems with researching this period is that everything is propaganda. Mein Kampf and all the post-war memoirs (Speer, Guderian, etc) are self-serving narratives and the immediate post-war histories tend to be rooted in wartime assumptions, like they still have to convince us that Nazis are bad guys. The fact that we still have these debates about who influenced who speaks to how murky it all is.
@@feralhistorian There was people like the Thule society, who tried but figured out that you can't act like a huge national movement when you are an upper middle class book club. You can't have a mass movement without a bit of masses. The whole Weimar government enters the scene fast. The state itself is still the anti-democratic state from the German monarchy. So large bits of the state operate like democracy is just a temporary fad. Mein Kampf portrays a Hitler who is just a veteran like you, it has a bit of bluster about his military service. I still think it tries to convey the ideas he had growing, about Dolchstoslegende and a world where international jew cabals are an existential threat.
@@feralhistorian One of my mates created a work of fiction where Germany descends into civil war at the time. The world knows Hitler as the leader of one of several German factions fighting street brawls and insurgencies. Instead, Mussolini is the defining fascist leader of the period. Germany is some sort of ongoing proxy war meltdown.
So... I worked at IDW (which had the Hasbro license) for several years. Yes, during the G.I. Joe x Transformers era (the Hasbroverse was some crazy shit). Although I worked with the Sonic people, and the Locke and Key people (Joe Hill is an epic genius with a 9.4 grade "Killing Joke" under his bed, and Ian Flynn is great at parties and a real stand-up dude), I never worked on any of the Hasbro stuff (nor on Star Trek, to my eternal dismay). But, I used to get to read all of the issues before print and one of the best stories that I've ever read involves Starscream taking command of the Decepticons after Megatron is killed and the Autobots have evicted the remaining Decepticons off of the planet in a broken down old spaceship. Starscream can't rally his troops, and it all devolves into petty squabbles and infighting while the last of their Energon drains away. Then Megatron gets resurrected (because, of course, duh), and he lays into Starscream for his failures as a leader, but Starscream is just broken and doesn't fight back or argue with Megatron at all. Imagine having the writing skills to make Starscream a sympathetic character. They are some of the most brilliantly written panels I've seen in my whole life, and god damn have I seen some panels in my day.
As I recall it, there was a mini series a few years back where Cobra Commander managed to become president of America. Didn't last in the position for the full term, of course.
marvel comics came up with a lot of the mythology of gi joe and transformers, and the comics for both are awesome. larry hama's writing was both weird and amazing.
If I remember correctly, the initial concept for G.I. Joe had been for a Nick Fury, Jr, comic book series. That got ditched before ever going into print so the concept was retooled for the soon-to-be-relaunched GI Joe line. (Everyone forgets that prior to this iteration of GI Joe, they’d been fighting aliens)
As someone who was born in the mid 90's I saddly didn't saw or experience mostly of the 80's classic cartoons like Gi Joe, Transformers etc. As mostly of south american kids I grew up watching anime like Dragon Ball, Saint Seya and my favorite Robotech or Macross wich is about how earth fights off an alien invasion using f-14 that can transform into mechs.
Macross was great, at least I remember it being great. Looking back, it had just enough story scaffolding to imply some interesting ideas without getting to the heart of them. Not sure It'll happen, but I do have some notes for a potential Robotech video in the future.
@@feralhistorian, that would be awesome! Robotech was one of my favorite early anime, even though it was an amalgamation of 3 different shows. There was a book series that really did a much better job of tying them together, but I still re watch the entire series from time to time, it hasn't aged as well as other shows but there's still something about it that always brings me back. Love your videos!
_Macross_ is one of those shows that sounds as if it started as a parody (Defend Earth from alien invasion with transforming mecha (even the hero-ship/base transforms!) and the power of music!) only then they decided to take it seriously before they got out of pre-production. _Sailor Moon_ hits that spot, too, as a crossover between magical girls and _tokusatsu._
The thing that amazes me when I look back on beloved cartoon series of the eighties is that they were all basically glorified adverts for the toy lines. Transformers, GI Joe, Thunercats, Visionaries, MASK, He Man, Centurions. Then thinking back on the tiys I had as a kid they were very succesful at doing that.
One suggestion for a video I think you would like: Redscotgaming's two-part essay on Killzone, specifically part two. In one version, Cobra is the front for a Yuuzhan Vong-esque precursor civilization, in another, it's a crime syndicate crafted by an angry working joe who now wants to take over the world. Ironically, Cobra Commander was rather similar to Kylo Ren, most of the time.
@@AhsokaFanboy1138 I've only watched part 1 so far, but it did a great job of giving a solid background on the Killzone games. More than the original, I may have to get the emulator working to play Killzone 2 on pc.
I wasn't expecting that cosplay, but it made me double-check this wasn't another random ONA video for a sec. Had to restart the vid halfway through 'cause I was still laughing. Great stuff.
I still have most of my GI Joes from my childhood. Still think they are so cool. It started a long obsession with action figures that I can’t shake into my forties. Mostly, they get bought and hung on the wall. But every so often, I dig out the trunk with all of my old toys and let the kids pick a couple out. I end up spending the better part of an afternoon digging through it all and reminiscing. Oh, to be young again. Late eighties into the early nineties. Carefree. Sunday morning cartoons. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the TV and, for a time, in my cereal bowl. For a time there, the OJ Simpson trial was destroying my ability to watch cartoons after school. It seemed like it would never end
Oh, of course Starscream and Cobra Commander had the same voice actor. What an incredibly distinct voice, and apparently the only one he could do. I bet there's a toothbrush ad floating around where not-actually-Starscream tells me about getting at the ol' gum line.
As a kid I only wanted the cobra figures they looked better than most Joe's never got Cobra commander himself but my brother got Serpentor and I got a lousy Flint that giant skin mark didn't want to trade he traded it for an Ultra Magnus Transformer that he never let me play with 😞
Was the little brother having to pester to play with the toy and yet just old enough to question how come Cobra never won… if only to understand why the power imbalance. And to young to catch the writers’ shenanigans dealing with Lady Jay.
You know, the more I think about it, the storyline of the Command and Conquer games (the mainline ones), in a lot of ways feels like a more overtly sci-fi (and comparatively darker) spiritual successor to the basic premise of G.I. Joe. The “technologically-advanced and well-armed terrorist organization with mystical/cult aesthetics vs. an elite military organization formed specifically to fight them” is surprisingly similar, albeit in C&C all the sci-fi gadgetry in a modern setting is explained more via the presence of Tiberium. I can’t prove it was a direct inspiration, but the parallels are interesting nonetheless.
"Yoooo JOEBRA!" Yes, I'm one of the few, the proud, that love the GI Jeff Community episode. The guy that did Cobra Commander's voice in that... perfection. Wow, I had no idea about the origin story of the comic version of Hydra - dangit, I mean Cobra of course - Commander.
I'd never considered Cobra through the lens of fascism. I'd always absorbed them as being more like the Muslim Brotherhood. But you make good points. Larry Hama was a damn good writers/editor too.
Nah, Cobra had *massive* corporate interests. Extensive Enterprises was funding them, and MARS industries were their main weapons supplier, and functioned effectively as second in command. The Baroness was nobility from some dispossessed eastern European commie state that got run out by the Soviets. The combination of angry populism and industrialism and anti-communism are hallmarks of fascism. Interestingly, the Soviet union also had their own anti-cobra task force: “The October Guard.” The Guard and the Joes worked together on occasion, as Cobra was seen as a serious threat to both countries.
@@mahatmarandy5977I liked the October Guard. They were what a gimmicky communist action figure line would have been with dudes from different parts of the Pact and silly balloon wheel vehicles. There was some comics that dipped into the Cold War. One where the joes are in not-Laos to assassinate a spy. And one where three joes are undercover in a minor eastern state.
My friends and I were totally into the GI Joe ninjas in the late 80s. Someone reminded me at a wedding recently how when we were kids the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a ninja. I kind of glad that didn't happen now that I know more about it.
I grew up on g.i Joe comics.. I would talk to military cats about the stuff I learned from there..they were like dayum how did you know so much about weapons I was like huh go Joe comic books.,even the dossiers for each character was on point
Great video. When I was a kid, I loved reading G.I.Joe. Back then, like any kid, I saw Cobra as the bad guys. But as I got older and came to discover how rigged our society is to keep certain people on top, and their welfare minions getting free stuff, while the mainstream media lie about everything. All at the expense of the working class stuck in the middle. I have to admit that I came to have a lot of sympathy for Cobra. Now, having recently turned 50, I realize that if a working-class movement like Cobra actually existed, I might be one of the people joining it.
In the cartoons, Cobra didn't always have infinite money; running out of money and schemes launched simply to keep the lights on, so to speak, appeared on occasion. It lead to the hilarity of laid-off Cobra troops in unemployment lines, for example.
Have the original issue one and two of the uk version of the comic (was known as Action Force here because we don’t call our troops GI’s so they gave it an “international” sounding kind of name).
Before that there was Action Force vs Baron Ironblood in the Battle Action Force comic (based on Palitoys Action Force toy line) there was even a convoluted story line where Baron Ironblood betrayed his own terrorist organisation and became Cobra Commander
@ yeah, I have a battle action force figure in my spares bucket (like an ss soldier in red with black facemask, think it was a ‘crimson’ something or other)
"best take yer Snake-Venom and wear your protective face-diaper MASSSSSSSK - OR ELSE !" - Cobra Commader . "and we might've gotten away with it if it weren't for all of us pesky meddling kids" - every Scooby Doo villain ever .
Yeah! What was wrong with that one? Was it retired like a basketball jersey? "No, don't use that one. That's Bob's rifle. *thumps chest* ALWAYS ON PATROL BOB!" One day in the grocery store checkout ABW (Amazingly Beautiful Wife) and I are waiting and I'm reading the tabloid/magazine headline. I pop out a "Well now I know." She replies, "and knowing is half the battle." Three people back we hear a quiet, "G.I Joe!" Also, what the hell is up with Springfield man?
The comic was eventually destroyed by hasbo putting out new toys at a nearly monthly basis. So many new Joes were added each month to the comic you didn’t know who was who anymore and the story suffered. Stopped collecting around issue 150. It was a great ride up until that point.
You too! Yep, the storyline trailed off in 1991, around issue 118 or 120. which, if I recall, the storyline incorporated the ever increasing toyline. (The newer characters were weird, and some were even rehash of earlier Joe's.) I was able to buy the final issue, #155, at the Fort Irwin PX 30 years ago.
What an interesting video. I always love when children's media has adult themes. No kid wants to read a book about fascism, but give them a comic book and they can learn valuable lessons and maybe connect the dots when they're older.
They seemed to have failed to understand the lesson
@@c3alohaBecause parents did not use their children’s interest as a teachable moment. Consider the effort deployed by the videographer to connect the dots for us. That kind of analysis is not innate.
Then they're f*ed because propaganda around us isn't exactly antif4scist
generation x is a secret psychic military operation ... might wanna grab some popcorn ...
My parents hated that I loved the toy line, cartoons and comics. As a post Depression era WW2 generation I can see how that makes sense. It also makes sense how this franchise still maintains some appeal. The kids who were raised on the 80's toys are still hooked for more than the obvious reasons of nostalgia, there were cultural signs that resonated from our parent's generation and then were resurrected for the Cold War generation. Even today there is an essence of modern society and conflict found in the GI Joe vs Cobra theme. When you think about the state of modern politics it may become more difficult to discern who is playing the heroes from the villains anymore.
Spot on, I was the perfect age to be absolutely hooked on the toys and cartoon, and then by the comic when I was a young adult and it was collected and rereleased/continued. It helps that Cobra *always* had the cooler stuff and a super cool logo (much like the Decepticons).
It's funny just how interesting and thought provoking, and timeless an 80s cartoon meant for kids could be, and still have potential for more to this day and probably beyond, g.i joe may waver in popularity, but will never lose its relevance.
A big reason why I'm a fan to this day. Keep up the videos man you make some good stuff.
This is the best breakdown of Cobra I’ve ever heard. Well done sir.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
@@feralhistorian:40 That one belonged to Jimmy.
Never thought I'd see a disseration on COBRA that hits hard and true but here it is. COBRA being essentially born from disenfranchisement from the American Dream TM and radicalizing those who were burned by it makes it a fascinating parallel with the Joes who are as the tagline goes, "Real American Heroes". Whoever wrote that original run of comics was onto something excellent.
Thank Larry, Hama. He did a majority of the run back in the eighties and nineties until it was discontinued, he then came back in the early 2010s to relaunch GI Joe once again
It's a shame the "good guys" suck so much.
Fascinating as the bad guys are, I've exhausted myself being a contrarian. I'm tired of always playing the bad guy. I don't actually like being a bastard, but the bastards are the only ones who ever seem to get anything done!!!
No matter how foolish, twisted, or even straight evil the villain is; they are infinitely more interesting and carismatic than the cardboard cutouts defending the status queue.
Villains drive the plot by pushing the conflict towards a resolution. The resolution might be them getting thrown into a volcano of thier own creation, but at least they died doing something: As opposed to the heroes, who start every story sitting around with thier thumb up thier ass, only taking action when the villain forces them to, and only going so far as to remove the villain so they can return to putting thier thumb up thier ass.
The moment a hero says, something like "lets NOT return to the status queue", "Maybe we were wrong for allowing this conflict to happen in the first place" "maybe we can take this oppurtunity to change the world" the moment they do that, they break the episodic formula, and more importantly break the contract they have with the publisher to produce x number of episodes to air on TV or print.
Or worse; they become the next villain.
A perfect methaphor for the real-world villains; the corpo overlords who enforce the status queue to preserve thier rank and position, despite haveing long since lost thier edge, resporting to increasingly vile methods to compensate for thier inablity to adapt or grow. The very thing that causes every single conflict in fiction: unresolved conflicts always escalate, and it's always the people in power who refuse (or are too incompetant) to address these conflicts.
In that way, the good guys are always the villains because no matter how cartoonishly evil and flawed the antagonist is, the heroes are always responsible for enforcing this mediocre tyranny. Thier actions always set the stage for the next conflict. We're supposed to forgive them of thus. becuase they have good intensions, or some arbitrary moral code that nessesitates evil. But regardless of what excuse you use, the heroes never win. They just reset the cycle over and over. If it's not evil, at the very least it's pathetic.
Relateing this back to the real world (cuz that's the only reason we care about fiction) The cloest analog to this, are the cops enforcing unjust laws, the mercinary fighting to protect thier employer's interests, or the emergency responder simply patching holes to keep the ship afloat.
They aren't superemen, they can't save everyone, but what makes them lame is that they don't even try. Maybe when they start out, they might try. But they quickly learn they can't do it alone, so they accept mediocrity, and just put in the minimal effort. They show up to a crime scene, a fire, a car crash, a slum, village elder with an AK, warzone, and they let out a sigh as they go through the motions, emotionally detatched from the whole thing.
Compare that to how a villain approaches a dynamic situation. A villain might throw themself into the burning building just to spite God! Walk up the village elder, grab the elder's gun and pull the muzzle toward his own face like a suicidal lunatic and demand the elder shoot him or fuck off.
Villains don't follow the rules. Do you want to know what a good cop is? A cop who only enforces the law when he believes he should.
Good guys always suck because they only fight bad guys who break the rules, they don't fight the bad guys who make the rules. The villains always break the rules, and consequently, this puts them at odds with the people who make the rules, and it just so happens that the most pervasive evil in the real world today, comes from the people makeing the rules.
@@CappnRob The Joes are exemplars. There's no Joe Rambo among them, from what I recall. There was a big sprawling heap of them as every little military and paramilitary specialization had to have exactly one Joe.
There was an international Joe band for a while, I think. And their wonky Soviet counterparts, the October Guard.
@@SusCalvin oh yeah the Joes themselves are generally stand up guys I just love the irony of their sworn enemy being a creation of the failure of the American Dream lol
@@CappnRob There was a few episodes and arcs where the Soviet sphere got to be an antagonist. One where some Joes fail to infiltrate an unspecified Soviet satellite.
Now that I think of it, there's a chance John Rambo would be standing at a Cobra recruitment drive.
The Cobra of Larry Hama's comics was simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. It was solely about greed rather than any sort of religious ideology which made them more like 1920s Chicago gangsters than actual terrorists but they used the symbolism of revolution and fascism as a means rather to gain capital. The Baroness was all about the anti-capitalist revolution but became very disillusioned and left with her lover, Destro, who formed the Iron Grenadiers; an extraterritorial arms sales organization based in Scotland. Oddly, Cobra was anti-drugs and took out a drug syndicate led by the Headman as he was addicting Cobra civilians to junk.
There was also a Cobra accountant who also raised birds of prey and thus dressed like a bird to make them happy.
About the anti-drugs, its probably from the nazi, who disliked drunkenness and recreational drug use, but did not have a problem to give its troops panzer-chocolate (Methamphetamine) to make them fight harder and longer.
@@wesleystreet I think it's a feature in many dictatorships that the elite gets to pursue weird side projects and fiefdoms.
@kirgan1000 Pervitin is Axis Germany, Philopon in Axis Japan the US version was called Benzedrine
Raptor predicted the hipster thing of taking up archaic past times.
@@wesleystreet Cobra was out and about selling weapons. Usually in such a way that a place would destabilize and either grow more dependent on Cobra or become a Cobra client.
That different parts of a dictatorship gets a license to pursue weird pet projects and to build personal little fiefs happens.
You can't really tell Himmler to stop chasing the hammer of Mjolnir. What are you gonna do, fire him and his security system?
One part of the comic I recall is a scene where after plot releases Cobra Comander and Destro from imprisonment, Destro asks CC if he knows how to hot wire a car, and CC basically goes, "Hot wire? Come on we're heading to the nearest car dealership. I'll show you how a pro steals a car."
Cut to them driving down the highway in a sportscar with CC explaining how he got the dealer to tangle up the paperwork so thoroughly that it would be at least a week till the car could be reported as missing. Also he had the paperwork to drive across state lines.
That is the Cobra Commander I want to see. I'm tired of the whiny, useless figurehead. MY Cobra Commander can baffle with bullshit.
This shows CC was hyper-competent as a car salesman, but hit his peter-principle limit with an international terrorist organization.
I've never needed any paper work to drive across state lines & I've driven across a lot of state lines for decades now.
@@11C1P You're one of those good people who follows traffic laws. I can vouch you will need that paperwork when you get pulled over. Something tells me CC is the kind of guy who gets pulled over.
@@Plaprad Been pulled over lots of times, only paperwork I needed is the same paperwork I need if I get pulled over in my home state, Driver license, registration & proof of insurance.
Hama was a genius. The comic book Cobra was truly frightening. It was so scary because you could relate to why it formed in the first place.
The Comic was ill. That one were Dr. Mindbender tries to break Storm Shadow's conditioning.
Hama was a Vietnam vet. He knew what Commies using kids on bikes, sympathetic tv, & hídden financing could do.
I seem to recall that a big part of Hama's GI Joe development was that he originally pitched a Nick Fury/SHIELD revival, which didn't take, but when he got involved with the new GI Joe toyline, he repurposed a lot of his SHIELD ideas, so SHIELD became the GI Joe organization while Hydra became Cobra. I forget how it all fits in detail, but anyway, Hama is a very good writer.
RIP to Christopher Collins VO for Cobra Commander, and Starscream. gone too soon for such an actor who played the Heel like a BAWSE
Chris Latta was his name
@@nurgle333 He did go by Chris Collins on occasion. I believe he used it when he was on Star Trek as a Klingon Captain and later a Pakled
Fun fact, my father not only grew up on the OG big GIJoe toys, he had the famed and desired (as I’m told at least) Mobile Command Center toy. Any time he or I mentioned that to any GI-Joe fan they look at us with shock and envy.
at 1:30 - I was today years old when I realized that Cobra Commander and Starscream had the same voice actor.
Good for Starscream, he finally got to be the leader!
Literally the same character
Chris Latta, RIP
You think *that's* funny? He was also Gung Ho, the Marine...
That's why it was cool when GI Joe had crossovers with Transformers , like in the comics.
There is a G.I. Joe tabletop RPG published by Renegade Game Studios.
When I was stationed in Germany in '88 & '89, I tried to get our unit to use a rallying cry of "Yo SWO!". SWO stands for "Staff Weather Office(r)". We were Air Force weather support for the US Army 3rd ID.
Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
The other half is unfettered violence.
Wait, there's a G.I. Joe tabletop RPG?! Looks like there's another TTRPG I need to buy and never get to play, lol.
So you're the guy that got all our ops canceled due to weather.
Love that last line! Echoes of Patton, sir. 😁
Wish I knew that! We were busy playing Twilight 2000 on Ramstein at that time.
I thought the other half was evenly divided between red lasers and blue lasers?
“A cobra sheds its skin” is such a bone chilling characterization of fascism
gotta luv them 'kinder gentler' multi NAtionalistic ZIonists - and bow-down and bend-over for their kosher-supremacist HELLBENT for total world domination - OR ELSE - they'll social-distance and cancel you for good.
them proudly wickedly WOKE insider cheater-class not-see flunky minion INFLUENCERS - AND their greedy-sadistic master-minded big-tech god-fraud deceptacon hex-nut kingpimps think they are CRAFTY enough to schmuck the whole world into going to WAR against everything pure and natural and good - but they DEFINITELY got another thing coming ... so basically we better REJOICE ! like we ain't got no choice ! and nevertheless redeem our original intelligently-designed goddesspeed again regardless yawl !
This was great.!!
I thoroughly enjoyed this..
I was born in 83, my best memories were G.I. Joes, and
COBRA COMMANDER, is and always will be the bad ass villain of all time..
Your explanation of COBRA is one of the reasons many people like me did not like the First order from Star Wars.
As a terrorist organization, it makes sense that that would be powerful and a challenge to our heroes, but relatively easy to beat. It makes no sense why they are depicted exactly the same as the galactic empire, more powerful somehow, and still relatively easy to beat.
This is great- your emphasis on Cobras infiltration tactics is awesome! They've always been so underrated on that, likely because it's only ever emphasized by Hama in the comic run, but it's one of the coolest factors about their lore
My favourite version of Cobra Commander comes from GI Joe: Renegades. It a prequel that actually tries to explain Cobra's limitless funding and decade-plus technological lead on the U.S. military.
The idea of Cobra as an even more evil Wal-Mart or Amazon covertly shipping weapons to the back rooms of fortified warehouses and building tanks in underground bunkers in preparation for a day when they cement control of the global economy with a military overthrow of the United States is my perfect blend of unhinged.
Cobra can be thwared but never defeated because Cobra has already *consumed and replaced* too much machinery essential to the global economy.
The reality that billionaires have turned the world into an idle game where wealth has to be increasingly expressed in scientific notation just feels like a complete lack of imagination and ambition in comparison.
Renegades is great.
🤮
The top 2% and megacorps don't want the peasants and serfs to get "ideas".
💯
They had their own soda brand. COBRA COLA!!!!
Goddamn, Larry Hama is a genius!
I'm fairly certain that thanks to Cobra we got Nod.
The original 80’s GI Joe comics fleshed out Cobra’s origins and politics in a more detailed way than the animated series ever did.👍
In the UK, the GI Joe action series was known as Action Force and was altered slightly to reflect a more British-like military. Their initial baddie was a guy called Baron Ironblood and his army of Red Shadows. Baron Ironblood (for some inexplicable reason) decided to dismantle his army of Red Shadows and rebrand himself as Cobra.
Yes! I have some of those issues (news tabloid-style) that I bought in St Vincent, SVG in 1986.
No, Action Force was a separate toyline and comic (but based on Action Man, which was a licensed version of American toy G.I. Joe) before the two properties were merged together. And Action Force was international with operatives from all over the place.
As an 80's kid GI Joe will always have a special place in my heart. I see some similarities between Cobra and the SPECTER organization in James Bond. Both were created in part to give the protagonist an apolitical opponent who looks bad at first glance (cartoonishly so) and does not marry the story to current events. Ironically that might have made the villains more adaptable to different periods than the heroes.
Cobra is easily in my top 10 favorite villains of all time list, especially the one from those Marvel 1980s/90s comics. Wish they'd reissue those in print collections like they did with a bunch of older Punisher comics.
Now if only we could've gotten a great GI Joe video game for current consoles and pc. That last one was bad...
The comics have been reissued multiple times over the last twenty-ish years. The new license holder (Skybound Entertainment) has stated that they intend to reissued *ALL* of the comics from all the various runs (Marvel, Devil's Due, IDW) so if ya keep an eye out you should be able to get them easily, it's just a matter of time.
Also you're right about Cobra being a top ten antagonist.
An excellent breakdown of Amway meets ISIS meets Scientology. And yes, it does continue to resonate.
Wow. Excellent way of putting it.
…
🤔…
Say-something “familiar” about-Waitasec! You’re on TH-cam??(!!)..,
Cobra as they are depicted on the cartoon show on tv, incompetent louses. Cobra as they are depicted in the comic, competent and deadly, and only the plot armor can save the heroes, and sometimes Cobra do overcome the plot armor.
Until it became claear that overpowered Snake-Eyes could kill every Cobra leader with ease, then the comic became a farce.
@@scockerymaybe if SAW Viper had training with Storm Shadow?🤔
He is 100% right. I read the comics back and forth as a tween and that's it. Larry Hama got the job nobody wanted (to create the lore for a silly toy soldier line) and created something that had certain roots and made sense out of it.
Corba was always my favorite faction. When i was a child, i collected Joes with over a hundred figures and purchased more weapons packs than any kid should. I miss those days.
This is the most meaningful journalism that I've seen all day.
Great commentary man! I posted on Facebook just now on how cartoons for kids aren’t this deep. But we live in a time where kid’s entertainment is very fractured. If you watch mainstream tv, kids shows are really neutered. But this is time where their are hundreds of outlets, so if your a kid that likes cartoons, you can find animated versions of Bat Man: Killing Joke, Neon Genesis Evangelone, or whatever. When I was a kid, you only had a few places that put kid’s entertainment out their so all the kids saw the same shows, so the stuff I watched was watched by every kid in my cohort. That makes a difference. I suppose that the internet now ensures that after a certain point kids can watch anything they want, ranging from Mandolorian to ISIS recruitment videos, but a lot of parents might steer them to Magic School Bus or Disney shit. We got stuff that was the moral equivalent of Captain Crunch Cereal and that was great. We got to figure out our morals outside of a carefully controlled scheme. Shit my parents let me watch slasher movies. I like that freedom of letting kids explore the world on their own and not trying to design their minds for maximum productivity.
Incredibly thought provoking, intelligent, and entertaining! Watching again, subscribing and sharing! Awesome!!!
The story expressed in awesome and accurate fashion, thank you so much for this
This guy looks like”Howling Mad Murdock “ from the A-Team lol
I was thinking the Leader, from the Incredible Hulk😂
Una de las mejores reseñas que he visto de G.I. Joe y Cobra 🤩🤗😎!
Will you ever cover "The Brotherhood of Nod" from the Command & Conquer Series. It too, predicted a lot of the modern things we are dealing with now despite being in a alternate sci-fi timeline.
Not anytime soon. I haven't played much Command and Conquer and I try to stick to lore I've lived in for awhile and really know. But C&C is high on the list for next time I go on a retro gaming bender.
Nod is like a cross between Cobra and Shadaloo from the Street Fighter movie.
@@feralhistorian Any thoughts to doing an analysis of the mentality of the faux revolutionary rich brats of the RAF cadres in the movie " The Baader Meinhof Complex ".
On a related tangent, I'd recommend Captain Power and Exosquad, if you've never seen them. The former is a post-apocalyptic Saturday morning live-action series with some of the first CGI characters to ever hit TV. Tagline: "When man fought machine... and machine won." Written by JMS several years prior to B5. The latter is basically WWII in space, or GI Joe with spaceships and NO EJECTION SEATS. Seriously, ships and mechs blow up all over the place with lots of people on board. Named characters die *on screen*. The lead villain slowly turns more and more into late-war Hitler, complete with the bombastic speeches. It's a wonder how they ever got all that stuff past the censors, even if you allow for the fact that it was a '90s show and there weren't as many restrictions on kids' entertainment as in the '80s.
I SHALL INSCRIBE YOUR NAMES IN STONE.
Fascinating video. It was a great take on an incredible cartoon/ comic that was so important in my childhood. I look forward to seeing more like this. Thanks.
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle." No better way to end a segment like this brother! well done!😂
_World War Z_ author Max Brooks wrote an excellent graphic novel, a series of character vignettes on both the Cobra and Joe sides/
That book...
Was the plan for the pandemic.
There's a video of Mel Brooks guving away the game.
80's kid here. Cobra had the best gear, coolest uniforms. They only had the one hot chick though, The Baroness, whereas GI Joe had at least two Scarlet and Lady J. This is a good analysis.
Whenever I think if Cobra from G.I. Joe, I am reminded of Amtrak's "Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR)" program and the picture of the officer dressed in black with a bump helmet and face mask, and thinking to myself: "They really didn't think this name through very well, did they?"
*pre programming. Seriously.
history Note. Most folks at Marvel hated doing these comics. BUT the writer of GI Joe was a vietnam vet and jumped at the chance to do this comic and it was the best IP comic EVER. Seriously there was one comic where Snake Eyes and Stormshadow just ninja killed a entire island with zero text. All art to point out as ninja they make ZERO Sound.
💯💯💯💯💯💪
You said "Blue Shirts".....
I'm all-in.
Honestly, classic Star Trek, Top Gun and GI Joe were so formative on my young psyche in the 1980s and I always wanted to join the Canadian Forces. It took the long road to finally get here, but I joined at 45, fulfilling that running desire in my life to serve.
So basically, the propaganda worked?
Though this cartoon was infamous for being a half-hour commercial for the toy line, "G. I. Joe" nonetheless impressed me with the level of character backstory detail that made the cartoon heroes and villains much more than simple . . . well, typical cartoon heroes and villains. But I had no idea that the backstory was this incredibly deep.
Though the "G. I. Joe" cartoon was "after my time;" when I was in grade school, we would watch a live-action Japanese import titled, "Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot," that featured similar themes and flamboyant, over-the-top villains - and a special organization created to fight them - all with highly developed backstories. The good guys were a G.I. Joe / Megaforce-like group called "Unicorn," while the bad guys - an invading alien terrorist group (who used human "Janissaries,") called "The Gargoyle Gang" in the show - was very much like COBRA, (and, along with Marvel's HYDRA, may have even inspired it.) The Supreme Commander of Gargoyle was a Cthulhu-like being called Emperor Guillotine, and he probably gave more Boomer kids nightmares than Freddy Krueger did to the kids of Generation X.
Please consider applying your research and analytical skills to a study of "Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot," as a future project. Thanks for posting this!
663rd Like.
I was born in the early 90's so GI-Joe was not in my headspace as a kid. But the movies made me in look up the comics because I felt this had to be better written somewhere.
It was.
That said I think to myself that the sillyness of the cartoon deters a lot away of the grimness of the concepts. Like the not so subtle omages and refrences to Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft's works in the occult shenanigans that showed up every once in while.
Cobra as the military arm of a centuries spaning cult of worshipers and human agents of distant Alien Gods like Yig and Cthulhu if done by a horror writer with a an enthusiasm of Military Sci-Fi could make nightmares and insanity of the Cobra-G.I.Joe Wars.
Like the United States and their allies becoming aware of these ancient conspiracies and secret wars between Lovecraftian Cult's and Cobra somehow came on top has more control over financial and political powers than they can imagine.
And now Cobra aim's to take control of the Earth and rule as the human agents of a Alien Empire beyond human comprehension, believing that what that Empire can give to humanity makes all other religions and beliefs meaningless in comparison.
I've never heard it put so succinctly, but your words amalgamate thoughts I've had on the topic over the years, thank you.
Larry Hama's genius is criminally underrated.
I have seen a few notorious Cobra schemes shady groups have looked to pull off in reality. That Larry Hama was onto something. Great content. Thank you.
Tell me you live in Colorado without telling me you live in Colorado. Great video, I’m having a mid-life crisis in my late 40’s and have been doing a G.I.Joe revival with the Classified series and compendium comics. The wife tolerates it at the moment, but man, I’m loving reliving my childhood. Keep it up, I enjoy the content
Would love to see an update to this video regarding Image’s Energon Universe, which merges GI Joe with Transformers.
That big king cobra guy who shouts "COBRA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA" has always made me think of Jihadists.
Himilayas are near Afghanistan. It wasn't a "fluke"🤫
5:28 OH I love that line. It's often the Revolutionary who calls their opposition Reactionary, but when you look at Revolutionaries, they are almost always "THE REACTIONARY" force.
No better example than the Short German Civil War that happened when the Weimar Republic was established. The Social Democratic Party took power, and wanted to install a Democratic Government. The more Marxist elements of the SPD split away, into two different factions, the Independent Socialist, and the Communist, and both joined forced and tried to overthrow the newly Founded Weimar Republic. They viewed the leaders of the SPD were not Revolutionary enough, and had stolen their "GLORIOUS" revolution out from under their feet and have betrayed the working class.
After the original attempt to take the capital of Berlin failed the Independent Socialist negotiated a truce with the Social Democratic, but the Communist, also known as the Spartacus refused to Negotiate at all. Well the result was pretty lets say, obvious being the Army had the back of the Social Democrats.
What is funny is the Marxist since had tried to portray the Spartacus uprising as a "peaceful" revolution in spite of the fact they were armed to the teeth. This same scenario also played out in Bavaria months later. They called the Weimar Republic the Reactionary Force in that conflict despite it was these revolutionaries who tried to overthrow an already established revolutionary government.
Fun and interesting fact. Sepp Dietrich, Adolf Hitler and Julius Schreck were official members of the Communist government in Bavaria in early 1919. Though Hitler held a very low rank, being an elected representative of his garrison. But I find it interesting the most famous Waffen SS General was once a Communist, and so was Julius Schreck the founder of the SS.
The whole Weimar period is its own interesting mess that defies a lot of modern categories. Hitler, Dietrich etc weren’t so much “communists” as anti-democrats and disgruntled veterans caught up in events. Modern thinking tends to look at Nazism and communism as polar opposites but if we look at that period from 1918 to about 1925 we can see Nazism form as a sort of mutant offshoot of radical communist and socialist ideas, taking the pieces that they could use and discarding what they didn’t want, mix in a lot of the Freikorps militarism and sense of betrayal about the war, and it starts to look like a story of men looking for answers, quickly deciding that communism wasn’t it, but being flung off in a new direction by it.
Their early involvement with the SPD does give some insight into the time.
@@feralhistorian Personally for Hitler I think it may go much deeper but it's sadly speculation. Reason I believe this is because he was a known Patron of Cafe Central in Vienna Austria. In his youth, which was a major Socialist hot spot. There has been much discussion on where Hitler learned his energetic, emotion infusing style of Speech. Being nearly identical to how Social Revolutionaries would give public speeches. I personally believe it was from his time in Cafe Central. There is evidence that during his time in Vienna Hitler had met Lenin. The degree of their relationship is a mystery though. Hitler himself completely white washed his past including controlling his own narrative which for how foggy his past is, many still cite Mein Kampf about his past. Which if we're honest can not be trusted in the slightest. But to me there is enough to claim he was a Marxist before WWI.
Why he chose to not aid the Communist in Bavaria could very well be because the Great War turned him into a Nationalist. Despite his Socialist tendencies. It was only a few months after the Communist were defeated that he joined the German Worker's Party as a spy originally. A Racist, Nationalist, Anti-Communist Socialist party which would captivate him. Most of the cornerstones of Nazism were pretty much already there before he joined the party.
TIKhistory describes the Nazis as Racial Socialist. Which fits quite well. If the Race is the Collectivist Group you build your Socialism around. Of course you're not going to keep all ideas lets say Marxist Socialist support.
There’s plenty of evidence that Hitler was a nationalist before the Great War, not least his going out of his way to avoid serving in the Austrian Army and instead enlisting with Germany. But I think it’s clear that he was heavily influenced by the socialist/communist movements swirling around pre-war Vienna and especially post-war Germany. In grossly simplistic terms, Nazi ideology is a fusion of equal parts radical socialism, freikorps militarism, and esoteric/occult nationalism.
I’m 99% certain that the whole “Hitler met Lenin” story is complete fiction. The only evidence I’ve ever seen cited is the famous chessmatch drawing, which depicts a guy that looks like 1930s Hitler (in 1909) playing against a guy with a full head of hair when photos of Lenin from the period show him clearly going bald. Now I concede it’s possible that they could have met, but we have no reason to think they did.
One of the problems with researching this period is that everything is propaganda. Mein Kampf and all the post-war memoirs (Speer, Guderian, etc) are self-serving narratives and the immediate post-war histories tend to be rooted in wartime assumptions, like they still have to convince us that Nazis are bad guys. The fact that we still have these debates about who influenced who speaks to how murky it all is.
@@feralhistorian There was people like the Thule society, who tried but figured out that you can't act like a huge national movement when you are an upper middle class book club. You can't have a mass movement without a bit of masses.
The whole Weimar government enters the scene fast. The state itself is still the anti-democratic state from the German monarchy. So large bits of the state operate like democracy is just a temporary fad.
Mein Kampf portrays a Hitler who is just a veteran like you, it has a bit of bluster about his military service. I still think it tries to convey the ideas he had growing, about Dolchstoslegende and a world where international jew cabals are an existential threat.
@@feralhistorian One of my mates created a work of fiction where Germany descends into civil war at the time. The world knows Hitler as the leader of one of several German factions fighting street brawls and insurgencies. Instead, Mussolini is the defining fascist leader of the period. Germany is some sort of ongoing proxy war meltdown.
Serpentor was really crazy if you think about it an amalgamation of historical figures
So... I worked at IDW (which had the Hasbro license) for several years. Yes, during the G.I. Joe x Transformers era (the Hasbroverse was some crazy shit). Although I worked with the Sonic people, and the Locke and Key people (Joe Hill is an epic genius with a 9.4 grade "Killing Joke" under his bed, and Ian Flynn is great at parties and a real stand-up dude), I never worked on any of the Hasbro stuff (nor on Star Trek, to my eternal dismay). But, I used to get to read all of the issues before print and one of the best stories that I've ever read involves Starscream taking command of the Decepticons after Megatron is killed and the Autobots have evicted the remaining Decepticons off of the planet in a broken down old spaceship. Starscream can't rally his troops, and it all devolves into petty squabbles and infighting while the last of their Energon drains away. Then Megatron gets resurrected (because, of course, duh), and he lays into Starscream for his failures as a leader, but Starscream is just broken and doesn't fight back or argue with Megatron at all. Imagine having the writing skills to make Starscream a sympathetic character. They are some of the most brilliantly written panels I've seen in my whole life, and god damn have I seen some panels in my day.
As I recall it, there was a mini series a few years back where Cobra Commander managed to become president of America. Didn't last in the position for the full term, of course.
Never thought I would see much less be interested to see a video essay on GI Joe. Well done. 👍👍👍
Everything here has at least a little touch of the whimsically absurd.
marvel comics came up with a lot of the mythology of gi joe and transformers, and the comics for both are awesome. larry hama's writing was both weird and amazing.
If I remember correctly, the initial concept for G.I. Joe had been for a Nick Fury, Jr, comic book series. That got ditched before ever going into print so the concept was retooled for the soon-to-be-relaunched GI Joe line.
(Everyone forgets that prior to this iteration of GI Joe, they’d been fighting aliens)
As someone who was born in the mid 90's I saddly didn't saw or experience mostly of the 80's classic cartoons like Gi Joe, Transformers etc. As mostly of south american kids I grew up watching anime like Dragon Ball, Saint Seya and my favorite Robotech or Macross wich is about how earth fights off an alien invasion using f-14 that can transform into mechs.
Macross was great, at least I remember it being great. Looking back, it had just enough story scaffolding to imply some interesting ideas without getting to the heart of them.
Not sure It'll happen, but I do have some notes for a potential Robotech video in the future.
@@feralhistorian, that would be awesome! Robotech was one of my favorite early anime, even though it was an amalgamation of 3 different shows. There was a book series that really did a much better job of tying them together, but I still re watch the entire series from time to time, it hasn't aged as well as other shows but there's still something about it that always brings me back.
Love your videos!
🤣Dude I don't think you have to explain Robotech.
_Macross_ is one of those shows that sounds as if it started as a parody (Defend Earth from alien invasion with transforming mecha (even the hero-ship/base transforms!) and the power of music!) only then they decided to take it seriously before they got out of pre-production.
_Sailor Moon_ hits that spot, too, as a crossover between magical girls and _tokusatsu._
The thing that amazes me when I look back on beloved cartoon series of the eighties is that they were all basically glorified adverts for the toy lines. Transformers, GI Joe, Thunercats, Visionaries, MASK, He Man, Centurions. Then thinking back on the tiys I had as a kid they were very succesful at doing that.
One suggestion for a video I think you would like: Redscotgaming's two-part essay on Killzone, specifically part two. In one version, Cobra is the front for a Yuuzhan Vong-esque precursor civilization, in another, it's a crime syndicate crafted by an angry working joe who now wants to take over the world. Ironically, Cobra Commander was rather similar to Kylo Ren, most of the time.
I will check it out.
@@feralhistorian What did you think? Also, I found an interesting video based around Horde Prime of She-Ra about his Fascist influence.
@@AhsokaFanboy1138 I've only watched part 1 so far, but it did a great job of giving a solid background on the Killzone games. More than the original, I may have to get the emulator working to play Killzone 2 on pc.
@@feralhistorian Glad you enjoyed it. The Helghan Corporation sounded a little like the East India Company.
>So in an sense, every revolutionary is a reactionary
Ain't that the truth.
No, it isn't the truth
I wasn't expecting that cosplay, but it made me double-check this wasn't another random ONA video for a sec. Had to restart the vid halfway through 'cause I was still laughing. Great stuff.
Kryptek Typhon pattern bag was a nice touch.
Very interesting to think that Cobra could be recast as any number of “non-state actor” types.
I still have most of my GI Joes from my childhood.
Still think they are so cool. It started a long obsession with action figures that I can’t shake into my forties. Mostly, they get bought and hung on the wall. But every so often, I dig out the trunk with all of my old toys and let the kids pick a couple out. I end up spending the better part of an afternoon digging through it all and reminiscing.
Oh, to be young again. Late eighties into the early nineties. Carefree. Sunday morning cartoons. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the TV and, for a time, in my cereal bowl.
For a time there, the OJ Simpson trial was destroying my ability to watch cartoons after school. It seemed like it would never end
Oh, of course Starscream and Cobra Commander had the same voice actor. What an incredibly distinct voice, and apparently the only one he could do. I bet there's a toothbrush ad floating around where not-actually-Starscream tells me about getting at the ol' gum line.
As a kid I only wanted the cobra figures they looked better than most Joe's never got Cobra commander himself but my brother got Serpentor and I got a lousy Flint that giant skin mark didn't want to trade he traded it for an Ultra Magnus Transformer that he never let me play with 😞
Based
I think the funniest and saddest thing is that Cobra Commander could be basically any major political leader alive today, and it would fit.
Or Zartan🤫
Was the little brother having to pester to play with the toy and yet just old enough to question how come Cobra never won… if only to understand why the power imbalance. And to young to catch the writers’ shenanigans dealing with Lady Jay.
You know, the more I think about it, the storyline of the Command and Conquer games (the mainline ones), in a lot of ways feels like a more overtly sci-fi (and comparatively darker) spiritual successor to the basic premise of G.I. Joe. The “technologically-advanced and well-armed terrorist organization with mystical/cult aesthetics vs. an elite military organization formed specifically to fight them” is surprisingly similar, albeit in C&C all the sci-fi gadgetry in a modern setting is explained more via the presence of Tiberium. I can’t prove it was a direct inspiration, but the parallels are interesting nonetheless.
That island move was top teir
Was comics COBRA just militarized Fight Club?
. . . Shit. You have a point there.
Guess Fight Club is a better GI Joe origin movie than the actual ones
"Yoooo JOEBRA!" Yes, I'm one of the few, the proud, that love the GI Jeff Community episode. The guy that did Cobra Commander's voice in that... perfection.
Wow, I had no idea about the origin story of the comic version of Hydra - dangit, I mean Cobra of course - Commander.
"A full belly and a diverting TV show
make for bad Revolutionary." Max Headroom 1985.
What a time for this to appear in my feed.
I'd never considered Cobra through the lens of fascism. I'd always absorbed them as being more like the Muslim Brotherhood. But you make good points. Larry Hama was a damn good writers/editor too.
Nah, Cobra had *massive* corporate interests. Extensive Enterprises was funding them, and MARS industries were their main weapons supplier, and functioned effectively as second in command. The Baroness was nobility from some dispossessed eastern European commie state that got run out by the Soviets. The combination of angry populism and industrialism and anti-communism are hallmarks of fascism.
Interestingly, the Soviet union also had their own anti-cobra task force: “The October Guard.” The Guard and the Joes worked together on occasion, as Cobra was seen as a serious threat to both countries.
@@mahatmarandy5977I liked the October Guard. They were what a gimmicky communist action figure line would have been with dudes from different parts of the Pact and silly balloon wheel vehicles.
There was some comics that dipped into the Cold War. One where the joes are in not-Laos to assassinate a spy. And one where three joes are undercover in a minor eastern state.
This is a great video. Really well written. Subscribed.
My friends and I were totally into the GI Joe ninjas in the late 80s. Someone reminded me at a wedding recently how when we were kids the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a ninja. I kind of glad that didn't happen now that I know more about it.
I grew up on g.i Joe comics.. I would talk to military cats about the stuff I learned from there..they were like dayum how did you know so much about weapons I was like huh go Joe comic books.,even the dossiers for each character was on point
Ima ad an excerpt of this to my IG account and I’ll be sure to give you and this account credit. Thanks for the awesome content!
I'm just gonna say it: I want that hood you wore in the beginning.
CC, Destro and let's not forget the majestic Baroness, the 80s were fanastic. #coldwar memories
Snake Eyes vs Storm Shadow was Rock vs Austin of the '80s
Still remember the night of the broadcast product rollout "movie". Loved Destro at first sight LOL .... KOHHHHH-buhhhrrrraaaaa!
Great video. When I was a kid, I loved reading G.I.Joe. Back then, like any kid, I saw Cobra as the bad guys. But as I got older and came to discover how rigged our society is to keep certain people on top, and their welfare minions getting free stuff, while the mainstream media lie about everything. All at the expense of the working class stuck in the middle. I have to admit that I came to have a lot of sympathy for Cobra. Now, having recently turned 50, I realize that if a working-class movement like Cobra actually existed, I might be one of the people joining it.
2 wings, same bird eh?
I never put together the significance of his helmet being a mirror. Thank you.
Well, looks like Cobra won, back in 79 .
In the cartoons, Cobra didn't always have infinite money; running out of money and schemes launched simply to keep the lights on, so to speak, appeared on occasion. It lead to the hilarity of laid-off Cobra troops in unemployment lines, for example.
now THIS is an interesting look at Cobra from the series!
Have the original issue one and two of the uk version of the comic (was known as Action Force here because we don’t call our troops GI’s so they gave it an “international” sounding kind of name).
Before that there was Action Force vs Baron Ironblood in the Battle Action Force comic (based on Palitoys Action Force toy line) there was even a convoluted story line where Baron Ironblood betrayed his own terrorist organisation and became Cobra Commander
@ yeah, I have a battle action force figure in my spares bucket (like an ss soldier in red with black facemask, think it was a ‘crimson’ something or other)
At the end of the day. I would rather have Cobra Commander than what we have today. Hail Cobra !!!
I can't say you're wrong.
@@feralhistorian I'm your 208th subscriber.
@@MAZEMIND I'm glad you're here and I hope you get something out of this oddball mix of content.
Oddly corporate fascists makes sense for era then and now.
Hes very trumpian.
How did I not see the last line coming?
"best take yer Snake-Venom and wear your protective face-diaper MASSSSSSSK - OR ELSE !" - Cobra Commader . "and we might've gotten away with it if it weren't for all of us pesky meddling kids" - every Scooby Doo villain ever .
Yeah! What was wrong with that one? Was it retired like a basketball jersey? "No, don't use that one. That's Bob's rifle. *thumps chest* ALWAYS ON PATROL BOB!"
One day in the grocery store checkout ABW (Amazingly Beautiful Wife) and I are waiting and I'm reading the tabloid/magazine headline. I pop out a "Well now I know." She replies, "and knowing is half the battle." Three people back we hear a quiet, "G.I Joe!"
Also, what the hell is up with Springfield man?
The comic was eventually destroyed by hasbo putting out new toys at a nearly monthly basis. So many new Joes were added each month to the comic you didn’t know who was who anymore and the story suffered. Stopped collecting around issue 150. It was a great ride up until that point.
You too!
Yep, the storyline trailed off in 1991, around issue 118 or 120. which, if I recall, the storyline incorporated the ever increasing toyline. (The newer characters were weird, and some were even rehash of earlier Joe's.) I was able to buy the final issue, #155, at the Fort Irwin PX 30 years ago.
Fascism is when you know who's actually in charge.
Is this dude chilling at the rock from Red Dawn?
He doesn’t know we “evil Communists” are already here in America 🤣
My favorite Cobra Commander line from the cartoons is "I have morons on my payroll!!!!"
Awesome video. love this
I'm a little surprised we never got a GI Joe vs Cobra RTS game. Maybe it would have been too close to Command & Conquer.
“Cobra pioneered mask mandates” 😂
That alone is worth a sub from me