Cobra Commander

In G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, he appears as the Doctor, a masked scientist helping James McCullen build a nanobot army. At the Arctic base, Duke learns who he is: Rex Lewis, the Baroness's brother, presumed dead in an airstrike during a mission Duke led.

Disfigured by the blast, Rex found Doctor Mindbender's nanobot research and implanted the machines in his sister, turning her into the Baroness under his control. As the base is destroyed, he takes the name Cobra Commander, uses nanobots to heal McCullen's burned face and puts him under his control. The Joes capture them both. His mask was redesigned because the comics version looked too much like a Ku Klux Klan hood.

In G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Storm Shadow and Firefly break Cobra Commander out of a prison in Germany and leave Destro behind. With Zartan posing as the US President, Cobra takes over the role of the Joes, who were wiped out in an ambush.

At the world leaders' summit at Fort Sumter, Cobra gets the world to launch its nukes, which self-destruct, and unveils Project Zeus, satellites that destroy London. When the fraud collapses, Cobra Commander escapes by helicopter and leaves Firefly behind. Luke Bracey plays him, and director Jon M. Chu confirmed he's the same Rex Lewis from the first film.

In the 1983 cartoon, Cobra Commander runs Cobra from Cobra Mountain, in a hood or a mirrored helmet, with Chris Latta's shrill voice. In The M.A.S.S. Device, when Destro aims the machine at the Earth's core, Cobra Commander himself begs the Joes for help. In the end the device is destroyed and he's arrested.

In The Revenge of Cobra, Destro builds the Weather Dominator and Cobra throws the planet's weather into chaos. Once again the Joes turn it around, and Cobra Commander ends up in custody while Destro and Zartan escape by hang glider.

In the 1986 season, Doctor Mindbender creates Serpentor from the DNA of history's conquerors, and the new emperor takes over Cobra. Cobra Commander is kept on as field commander and spends the season scheming to get his job back.

After the failed attack on Washington, he fires on the Joes and asks Serpentor to let him take the blame, and the two escape to the Terror Drome. In the last episode, Into Your Tent I Will Silently Creep, Cobra Commander founds a group of his own, the Coil.

G.I. Joe: The Movie reveals his cartoon origin. Cobra Commander was a nobleman working on biological weapons when Golobulus recruited him; Golobulus rules Cobra-La, a civilization hidden in the Himalayas that wants revenge on humanity. Because he kept failing, Cobra-La had Mindbender create Serpentor.

At his trial in Cobra-La, Golobulus exposes him to spores that slowly turn him into a snake. He escapes, leads the Joes to Cobra-La's lair and, his humanity gone, slithers away as a snake.

In the DiC series, which picks up after the movie, Serpentor leads a weakened Cobra. In the Operation: Dragonfire miniseries, the Baroness betrays Serpentor and Destro and restores Cobra Commander to human form.

He takes back the organization, renews his alliance with Destro and, in season two, leads Cobra's new offensive against the generation of Joes headed by Sgt. Slaughter and Hawk, with Gnawgahyde and Metal-Head as henchmen. Chris Latta was one of the few classic-cartoon voices to return.

He debuted in Marvel's G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #1 (1982), and the first figure, with a helmet, was a mail-in offer. In the comics he was a used car salesman whose brother Dan, a Vietnam veteran, died in a car crash; blaming the other family's survivor, he built Cobra in Springfield. In Renegades he poses as Adam DeCobray, head of Cobra Industries, and in Resolute he's voiced by Charlie Adler.