Cobra Commander in the Cartoon

I personally thought that Cobra Commander in the cartoon was simply murdering the real him in the comics. The comic version was less cowardly, a lot less that is. So while he was initially portrayed to be like Adolph Hitler, however the writers were SO STUPID to write him in the vein of Yosemite Sam or worse, Starscream as he was voiced by the late Chris Latta. He was later given such dumb plots like vandalizing the moon (which was really dumb) or that he frequently called for retreat, which was another trademark not in the comics but certainly Megatron did keep saying "Retreat!".

It came to a point that his incompetence caused Dr. Mindbender to organize a meeting between Destro and the Crimson Twins to create the Cobra Emperor. He discovered them but later his own guards turned on him. What the? I felt like he may not be paying the Crimson Guards properly either. Even his own confidant Scrap-Iron betrayed him and he was inevitably usurped by the new leader, Serpentor. He of course had always tried to regain his former position but failed. For some time, he became the Starscream of the series, which I felt should have been for Destro instead.

I find his sudden change of origin to be crazy in the movie. I mean, he after all organized Cobra to rule the world, not to overthrow humanity and NONE of the schemes in Cobra ever did that. It was really a huge hiccup in the writing IMO. The fact that he was changed into a snake was ironic also. So I also felt that his relationship with Serpentor was him the real leader vs. Serpentor the usurper. After the movie, Baroness (who soon got fed up with Serpentor) decided to restore him back to normal during the Dragonfire operation and he soon turned the tables on Serpentor.

So for the rest of the season, he got more dangerous and less cowardly, however he still couldn't defeat the Joes.