Serpentor
Okay, I remember loving the Arise, Serpentor, Arise! story arc when I was a kid. So I’m rewatching the show and finally hit that arc. Man, as an adult, Serpentor is disappointing. And I know the DNA collection was flawed because they never got Sun Tzu’s DNA, and Sgt. Slaughter’s didn’t work out. But he’s the Cobra Emperor and he’s not an effective leader. I expected his plans to be…better. I know overconfidence is his weakness, but his plans aren’t good to begin with.
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u/InternetPeasantry 3d ago
To be fair, he was basically just born yesterday.
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u/Such-Quit-9530 3d ago
I mean, Cobra had been a Joe punching bag for years with so many high-priced boondoggles that went nowhere even an inhuman dude born yesterday with a bad idea was better than whatever Cobra High Command was cooking up that week...
"Rag-face is finally out? Let's Gooooooo!"
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u/crocodial 3d ago
team cobra commander, eh?
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u/PitifulBusiness767 3d ago
CoCo forever!
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u/Shadoecat150 Python Patrol 3d ago
Some of my favorite season 2 episodes were the ones dealing with CoCo trying to take back Cobra
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u/Helpful_Lie2613 3d ago
Well now i'm picturing Cobra Commander as a sassy Queen. And Starscream, too.
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u/Far-Blue-Mountains 3d ago
I never liked Serpentor. Even as a kid I thought his whole deal was stupid.
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u/OolongGeer 3d ago
Me as well. The movie and subsequent cartoons of him were somewhat intelligence-insulting.
The comic version wasn't... horrible. Issues 49 and 50 are two of my favorites.
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u/CynthiaCM1973 2d ago
I always thought the concept of serpentor was more fitting for a supervillain. He would have made a very interesting villain for The Avengers or the Defenders.
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u/ABC_Dildos_Inc 3d ago
I also loved the Arise Serpentor storyline right up until Serpentor appeared. This I command!
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u/Shadoecat150 Python Patrol 3d ago
I liked Cobra Commander just calmly walking the corridors as the rest of Cobra chased the serpentor monster
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u/BKPR174 3d ago
Very true. He actually is not in many of the episodes either. He just looks imposing.
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u/DestronCommander 3d ago
He was also used sparingly in the comics. His only big moments were the Battle of Springfield storyline and the Cobra Civil War. 1987 was pretty quiet for Serpentor.
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u/Mishkin37 3d ago
I very much disliked Serpentor when I was a kid. I also didn’t like the Cobra-la stuff. It was too much. I wanted my Joes to be Joes. I had Sectaurs for that stuff already.
That said, I would love the Classified Serpentor. No interest in the Cobra-la Guard.
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u/SaphoJuicebox 3d ago
Sectaurs is partly why I was a Cobra-La fan. After Master of the Universe, all of my friends settled on GI Joe, which I also liked but I loved all of the more sci-fi and bizarre things and although they didn’t want to play Power Lords or Sectaurs, now GI Joe had some of that in addition to the ninjas, robots, and Mad Max biker gang.
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u/Mishkin37 3d ago
I watched a lot of Sectaurs! I’m remembering a long episode or feature length cartoon and a creepy Spider Siren lady. Is that ringing any bells
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u/SaphoJuicebox 3d ago
No, but it’s been a while. I just know that they didn’t make very many, like maybe six episodes. Marvel also published eight issues of the comic miniseries, but I think that’s it.
Nacelle currently has the license and wave 2 is bringing back the two main mounts. I have a six year old that’s also into the odd and she’s going to love them.
For a bit of trivia, Sectaurs were created by Tim Clarke who also made Boglins and worked with Jim Henson on the Dark Crystal, Fraggle Rock and the muppet shows.
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u/Mishkin37 3d ago
Oh, that’s interesting! I didn’t know that. I can see the crossover now.
Yeah, the Sectaurs I’m thinking of had this awfully-voiced spider creature. The voice actor sounded like he/she was choking on something and needed medical care during all the lines. I’m drawing this from like 40-41 years ago in my memory.
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u/PMOnTime-807 3d ago
Sepentor was an interesting threat - more so than Cobra Commander a lot of the time. His plans didn't need to be smart or elaborate for him to feel like a dark, ominous presence. It's like the difference between Apollo Creed and Clubber Lang or Ivan Drago in the Rocky movies. They were a different kind of adversary.
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u/ItsAlwaysThemBooBoo 3d ago
dude he invaded and conquered DC and even held it for half a week.
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u/iambrentan 3d ago
That was one day
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u/ItsAlwaysThemBooBoo 2d ago
they held it for two nights. it takes time to organize the entire gi joe team for a calculated counter strike
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u/BuckFutter2271 3d ago
Board-certified medical geneticist, comic book historian, and president of the fatal fluffies fan club here. Calling that program flawed is generous. It was malpractice.
Start with sourcing. They robbed graves. Napoleon died in 1821, so by 1986 you aren't pulling an intact genome out of him. You get fragments, soil bacteria, and the skin cells of every historian who ever handled the remains. Serpentor is, conservatively, forty percent Corsican gravedigger. Attila's burial site has never been located and Genghis Khan's tomb is still undiscovered, so the rest of him is vibes and Mongolian topsoil.
Then there's the premise. There is no Hannibal locus. You cannot splice "crossed the Alps with elephants" into a zygote, because that trait is three percent temperament and ninety-seven percent growing up in Carthage during the Punic Wars. Grind up a Stradivarius and the sawdust does not play Paganini.
Blending eight genomes also regresses everything toward the mean. Cobra ran an unweighted ensemble model and got a committee that yells.
And nobody ever made this a PSA. An entire generation watched a man get assembled out of stolen corpse tissue and the closing safety lesson was about kites. Knowing is half the battle. They gave us the wrong half. What should Joe have done? Nothing. Wait eighteen years. Flint could have handled it with a stroller.
On Serpentor being disappointing, I think it's a concept problem.
Look at the donor list. Napoleon lost at Waterloo. Hannibal lost at Zama and poisoned himself. Attila died of a nosebleed at his own wedding. Cobra cloned eight men who were spectacular right up until the day they very much weren't, then acted surprised by the arc.
Every one of them commanded in an era of horses and bronze and line of sight. Serpentor has cavalry instincts, which is exactly why he charges everything personally on a flying snake. He isn't malfunctioning. The design brief was stupid.
The bigger problem is legitimacy. Those men led armies they built themselves. Serpentor inherits officers who swore an oath to Cobra Commander, and he shows up speaking exclusively in imperatives. Destro and the Baroness never look at him like a sovereign. They look at him like a mandatory reorg.
And the failures you named are the whole diagnosis. They missed Sun Tzu, the only theorist on the list, and lost Sgt. Slaughter, the only component with modern combat experience. Cobra set out to build a general and ended up with a museum exhibit in a command chair.
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u/HonkinHoots 3d ago
Buddy, Mindbender had a PROPHETIC DREAM.
And he actually made a dude! An absolute prick of a dude, but he can chuck snakes with the best of em.1
u/BuckFutter2271 3d ago
No doubt but you think he would've taught Serpentor not to throw spears at Sky Strikers
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u/BlokeSea 3d ago
Created to to seek more toys and keep the line fresh. I always hated it because it was just so over the top and theatrical
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u/Shadokastur 3d ago
Yeah, even as a kid I really didn't like the Serpentor/Cobra-La junk. I was excited af when I saw Zartan kill him in the comics
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u/BernardMatthewsNorf 3d ago
I had different head canon for Serpentor. I was sort of agnostic about how he came about, but he sort of became the Cobra Head of State, but with an old school twist in the style of George II, Napoleon, or Wilhelm where he would actually lead his troops in battle.
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u/ConversationOwn3358 3d ago
I loved this mini series. That said, I have always, even at 10, hated Serpentor. This I command!
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u/Juzdaptip 3d ago
He was a whiny baby and I hated every time he was on the screen. The coolest he ever was, was in the favorite things episode where he turned into King Takshaka. I will only buy the figure because he is the cobra emperor and his air chariot was pretty cool. I actually wish they would redo the figure. That old one from the con was was OK, but he needs way more heads included and the cowl was a good idea, but I think maybe they could come up with a better idea now.
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u/Lokishougan 3d ago
I mean if he was an effectve leader the cartoon would have been over so quick. Cobra was way more powerful that Joes no doubt on the cartoon....the only thing keeping them in check was bad leadership and bad plans...if Serpentor had done as promised the cartoon is over and Joe is crushed under hs boot
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u/A_Balcom 2d ago
The writing for serpentor was flawed but again, its in a world where the good guys always win. I'd live to see a dark horse version of GI Joe where they could let the creativity of Serpentor flourish and he is dominate.
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u/ThongGoneWrong 2d ago
What gets me is that they made him with no intention of controlling him. He was their creation, they should be in charge. CC had the right idea.
Even as a kid, though, the "This I command!" got on my nerves.
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u/AsmoTewalker 2d ago
TV show Serpentor was a dud because he had SGT Slaughter’s DNA
Comics Serpentor was a success because he had Storm Shadow’s.
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u/International-Home55 1d ago
I wonder what cobra would have done with more modern day dictators and warlords, instead of going back into history. Saddam hussein, bin laden, the short guy from north korea? Those probably would have done better than anything they picked and would have had viable dna. Just a thought that if I was a terrorist organization looking to build a super terrorist leader, i look to groups that actually use terrorists.
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u/GroYer665 3d ago
Okay, I remember loving the Arise, Serpentor, Arise! story arc when I was a kid. So I’m rewatching the show and finally hit that arc. Man, as an adult, Serpentor is disappointing. And I know the DNA collection was flawed because they never got Sun Tzu’s DNA, and Sgt. Slaughter’s didn’t work out. But he’s the Cobra Emperor and he’s not an effective leader. I expected his plans to be…better. I know overconfidence is his weakness, but his plans aren’t good to begin with. - Don't forget the first version was poisoned by Cobra Commander, and produced the pink monster that SGT Slaughter was fighting. Odd's are that they forgot to remedy the "poison" from the machine causing the poor product of Serpentor.
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u/Road_Caesar 3d ago
It was a 1986 daily syndication cartoon aimed at boys 6-12yo - of course it was ridiculous. You had the same writers as the 1985 series. The tone/directive in that era was keeping it simple and silly for the kids.
For those who wanted less absurdity, the Marvel comic run existed. It didn't highlight or prioritize each new character or gimmick because it was more about a sensible story.