G.I. Joe Classified Series: The Chatty Pointless Thread & Performance Art

It was a setup! And I must say, shame on @Ru1977 for failing in his duties. You try to tee things up for people...
You're right. No excuse. I am shamed and need to get my mind back in the gutter.
I declare shenanigans. Look at the merch, the cosplay, and the many, many variant covers. Baroness not only outranks Scarlett in main character energy she's probably in the top 5 of the franchise. Admittedly, a decent portion of that is because many young boys' sexual awakenings were tied to the sexy-evil-librarian-with-vague-accent vibe, but she puts butts in seats.
And seats in butts, God bless her.
 
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Yup. Butts.
 
In ... partial seriousness.. I would argue that there's a difference between 'dedicated fans' and 'main character.' Baroness might have TOP energy, but not top -character- energy, as it were. I'd say she was firmly in the 'side character' territory with, quite frankly, most of the Joes, Dreadnoks, etc. Don't misunderstand - I could be wrong. Certainly. It just never struck me that she was a main character, despite how often she appeared.

Like how Irma in the Ninja Turtles cartoon was there all the time and could be plot-relevant, but wouldn't necessarily have come up if you'd asked kids in the '80s to name all the main Ninja Turtles characters.

Also... butts.
 
Oh I'd think anyone halfway familiar with the franchise would name her at least third when asked to name villains. As far as impact on plot, she is no Irma, man! Both comics and cartoon, she drives so much and isn't even portrayed as "just Destro's girlfriend" or anything. I think the closest to that may be when Serpentor makes her a hood ornament in the civil war story. Beyond that, she is a ruthless villain never afraid to get her hands dirty and often plotting away according to her own agendas, even against cohorts. Face it, she is awesome all around.
 
Oh yeah, I don't think awesome means 'a main character,' To be fair, I don't think most kids in the '80s would have named -anyone- besides CC and Destro as 'the main villains.' Just like you'd probably get a 'Snake Eyes, Scarlett, Duke' if you asked who the main good guys were. I'd say that is the strength and weakness of an ensemble cast -- lots of great characters, but you do tend to end up with just a couple that really stand out as the 'main' guys, if anyone does at all.

Any Stargate Atlantis fans? I'd liken it to that. Definitely an ensemble cast and everyone in it is fantastic. But I bet if you'd asked people shortly after the show ended who the main characters were... it would have been John and Ronan. People always pick the few that really stand out to them.
 
To preface, my wife's brothers are all jocks and muscleheaded bros... goodhearted, for the most part, bros, but bros. But they also do watch nerd stuff, like Marvel movies and Star Wars, and grew up on the GI Joe cartoon (none of them have ever touched a comic book), so I felt they could be a decent taste of 'the average' what-have-you. In a group text, I asked two of them to name some GI Joe villains. It went like this:

"Viper. No, I mean Cobra."
(I then asked for specific Cobras)
"Storm Shadow".
The other added, "Skeletor."
Then they sent each other a bunch of He-Man gifs and I'm about to mute the conversation.
So nevermind.
 
I still stand by it being a villain move to give us such a cool Baroness after no regular releases for years and cram it into a premium package. Hey it's been a minute, should we have another drawn-out conversation on Haslabs and their figures, and if we think it's a good or bad thing that $300+ Haslabs come with desirable figures? No? Okay.
As someone who owns all of her figures, I was just thinking the other day how dirty it is for them to do that. It seems so stupid not to just have a retro card version. A good retro card version.

Even without the pilot I thought for sure they would just flip the Crimson back out in Black. Or do the new comic version.
 
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