Duke

Conrad Hauser is a US soldier assigned, with his friend Ripcord, to escort the nanobot warheads James McCullen sold to NATO. The convoy is ambushed, and leading the attack is the Baroness. Duke knows her at once: she is Ana Lewis, the woman he was going to marry.

Years earlier, on a mission Duke led, a mistimed airstrike killed Ana's brother Rex. The guilt made Duke walk away from the wedding. G.I. Joe rescues both soldiers, and General Hawk lets Duke join because he knows the Baroness. At McCullen's Arctic base, Duke learns the masked Doctor is Rex, alive and disfigured, and that he was controlling Ana with nanobots. Rex and McCullen end up in custody.

In G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Duke is now a captain in charge of the team. He leads the rescue of a North Korean defector in the Korean DMZ and then a mission to recover nuclear warheads in Pakistan.

That's where Zartan, posing as the US President, orders an airstrike on the Joes. Duke dies in the attack along with most of the team. Only Roadblock, Flint and Lady Jaye survive, and they're the ones who expose the fraud. At the end, in a White House ceremony, the real President honors the fallen Joes.

In the 1983 cartoon, Duke is the Joes' field leader. In The M.A.S.S. Device, Cobra captures him and mind-controls him in the Arena of Sport, but his ring turns out to be a homing device that leads the team to Cobra Mountain. In The Revenge of Cobra, he's caught again and forced to fight Snake Eyes.

In the 1985 season, General Hawk disappears and Duke leads the team through all 55 episodes. In 1986, Hawk returns and Duke becomes his second in command. Michael Bell voices Duke, along with a crowd of other characters.

In G.I. Joe: The Movie, Lt. Falcon, Duke's younger half-brother, joins the Joes as a reckless Green Beret. He leaves his post to flirt with Jinx and ends up helping Serpentor escape. Hawk wants him court-martialed, but Duke talks him into sending Falcon to Sgt. Slaughter for retraining.

When Cobra attacks and Serpentor tries to kill Falcon, Duke steps in and takes the hit. He spends the rest of the film in a coma while Falcon grows up and leads the rookies against Cobra-La. At the end, the Joes learn Duke has woken up and is recovering. The original script killed Duke, but Hasbro changed it after the backlash to Optimus Prime's death.

In G.I. Joe: Resolute, the adult take written by Warren Ellis, Duke has history with Scarlett, who has also been involved with Snake Eyes. He gives her an ultimatum, and she chooses him.

He, Scarlett and Ripcord storm Cobra's Siberian base, home of the cannon that destroyed Moscow. Later, when a second cannon hidden in Springfield is aimed at Washington, Duke reprograms the targeting so the weapon fires on its own location. Steve Blum voices Duke here.

In G.I. Joe: Renegades, Duke is younger and hotheaded, but selfless. He and a small group stumble onto something at a Cobra Industries plant and get blamed for crimes they didn't commit. Duke ends up leading a band of fugitives, with Scarlett, Ripcord, Tunnel Rat, Roadblock and Snake Eyes close by.

The show also gives him a family: his brother Vince and his parents, Max and Connie. In the final episode, with the team's names cleared, Duke comes out of his fight with Cobra with the scar over his left eye that becomes this version's trademark. Jason Marsden voices him.

Duke arrived in 1983 as one of the first mail-away figures in the 3¾-inch line and debuted in Marvel's G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #22 (1984). In the comics he was born in St. Louis, finished top of his class at Fort Benning, speaks French, German and several Southeast Asian languages, and turns down officer commissions because he believes a commander belongs with the troops.