Even As A kid, I Knew, #DestroWasRight

By Destro Designs – Viper Den Studios

The problem with villains is that they always lose. Evil hates being a loser, so it creates scapegoats like Cobra Commander to take the fall under the guise of stupidity and cowardice.

So Cobra Commander was forever ruining Cobra’s plans for victory endlessly, by many different avenues—impatience, cowardice, greed, stupidity—all hallmarks of the Commander when he is put in the driver’s seat of a Cobra plan on the doorstep of victory.

As if this wasn’t hard enough to watch, episode after episode, I found myself SCREAMING at the TV, “JUST LET DESTRO DECIDE!” because in the passenger seat of the Cobra victory, Destro was always telling the Commander what roads to take, and the Commander just kept driving all over people’s lawns. No logical decisions being made based on the information and circumstances at hand—just Cobra Commander being an impatient, hollering buffoon while Destro screams into the void about the decision that actually best suited Cobra in the moment.

It’s no wonder Destro started the Iron Grenadiers. After so long, you can only take so many L’s as a leader because someone else insists on being the head honcho and messing it up. Pimps don’t lose, and Destro is the biggest pimp of them all. Gold-headed, Despoiler-flying badass Destro would’ve ruled the world had the forces of Cobra followed him to victory, as well as the Iron Grenadiers. But alas, that all happened down the road. Here, in the early stages of the Sunbow cartoon, we pick up the action with the M.A.S.S. Device and get to see right off the rip the dynamic between Destro and the Commander.

Before the surrender of G.I. Joe and its world leaders, Cobra Commander, dying to celebrate, went full-blown Leon Lett, celebrating too early in Super Bowl XXVII, with the Joes chasing that victory down like they were Don Beebe. But beyond his inability to keep the DJ from firing up the party, the egotistical peacock didn’t realize what his premature panic cost him in the M.A.S.S. Device campaign. The psychotic, sniveling serpent of a dolt couldn’t wrap his head around the notion that an empty threat destroys Cobra’s credibility.

Similar results came with the Weather Dominator and, of course, the Pyramid of Darkness.

After a full season of Sunbow cartoons where the Commander has bungled operation after operation, it becomes more evident than ever that Cobra as a whole was so open to the idea of needing a new leader that they devoutly scoured the globe—against Cobra Commander’s wishes—to get DNA for the craziest experiment ever in the history of man. This was followed by the whole of Cobra being perfectly fine with having to acquiesce to a Frankenstein-esque science experiment. The experiment, by the way, was done by a shirtless, bald man who wore a cape and a codpiece held together with suspenders. But yet, it was totally fine—because Cobra Commander had to go.

Serpentor’s reign wore everyone down to the bone with the ridiculous “THIS I COMMAND!” horseshit, but still, Cobra’s masses followed that chariot while cursing the Commander through the whole of Season 2.

All of which came to a head in the early moments of the G.I. Joe movie. Serpentor puts the Commander on blast, and then he is subsequently TORCHED by his most trusted confidants. Dr. Mindbender, Destro, and even the Baroness get their licks in—all going down in an epically hilarious and incredibly accurate way.

But then, things changed. These Cobra-La bug-loving, slithering, slime-ass weirdos went too far. A little bit of dressing down and some embarrassment could have perhaps motivated the Commander. But after a laughable trial in Golobulus’s kangaroo court, they sentenced the Commander to a fate worse than death.

I didn’t like this. The Commander was a cowardly moron, but he was OUR cowardly moron. It’s like having a friend where you and the rest of the crew will bust his balls about something because you’re friends—but the minute someone outside the crew says that same thing, it’s on sight, because no one messes with us but us.

So it was here that I cast all disappointment in the Commander aside and began to root for him. I cheered when, in “Operation: Dragonfire,” the Commander was restored to a bipedal, upright-walking something-or-other and then got his revenge on Serpentor with the help of Copperhead and newly minted Python Patrol Vipers. Too bad he couldn’t have turned Golobulus and his floating nut sack into an organic bowling ball to be tossed down the Commander’s private bowling alley for the remainder of that one-eyed bald prick’s life.

All that said, Cobra Commander is on my Mt. Rushmore of villains and a beloved character of mine. But I was a little know-it-all kid, so I had to root for what was so clearly the right choice—and that was the fact that #DestroWasRight.