Of course, you have to somehow establish Kobra as a threat capable of not immediately getting crushed by the Justice League; something Kobra himself almost seems aware of. He usually spent two weeks a year disguised as one of his followers--like a more evil Undercover Boss, which would just be Undercover Boss--but has to call it early this time, as he's heard doubts in the rank-and-file, and needs to let them, and the world, know the score. A couple weeks later, Flash stops a basic bank robbery in Central City, then gets shivved by the bank manager! It's Kobra in disguise, hitting Flash with "electrified nano-particles" designed to keep him out of action for days. He then challenges the rest of the League on TV, reveals his Ark ship, and poisons a bunch of people with nerve gas. Batman and Superman investigate, and find a holographic message, with Kobra calling out Green Lantern and Hawkgirl, to face him and his second, the Baroness--er, Lady Eve, at the Grand Canyon, or he'll blow up a cannister of nerve gas already planted in a schoolyard somewhere.
Regular TV reporter Snapper Carr is already on the scene; and Lady Eve wonders if Kobra should be revealing his organization, but he claims "the media-hungry world needsss a lessson." While GL and Hawkgirl are able to wrap up the pair, Kobra still gets them with a blast of nerve gas, then teleports out, with the reporters as prisoners, and claiming the heroes would die in 24 hours. Superman and Wonder Woman had found the schoolyard gas cannister, but it was empty: they still didn't have a sample to try and make an antidote. Kobra then confronts the team in their own Watchtower headquarters, able to disable the Martian Manhunter with his own mental discipline, and the Ark hacked the Watchtower's systems. His next challenge: Wonder Woman and Superman, versus Kobra's elite troops, at the Colosseum in Rome! Or, he'll launch two separate missiles full of nerve gas. Still, Batman has realized Kobra's error: he saw the League as stereotypes, only taking into account their most surface powers.
Superman and Wonder Woman fight well, but eventually go down under a high-tech blaster barrage. Batman then challenges Kobra himself, one-on-one, no weapons, casually dropping his utility belt as he taunted him. Lady Eve advises against it--he had everything to lose, and nothing to gain--but Kobra's ego won't let that go. After a solid fight, Batman has him, and Eve has to intervene for her boss, trying to spin it as "the ways of the snake lead to victory!" Batman is down, but not beat, and tells Kobra so: even if he did fall, the Flash and the Manhunter would be back, or regular people would stand against him. "No one believes in you."
Furious, Kobra launches his missiles, which Batman had been waiting for: he had Superman and Wonder Woman playing possum, and WW plays to the camera as she smashes the Ark up. Flash had been tracking the missiles through dozens of weather and surveillance satellites, and could feed the trajectories to the Manhunter, to telepathically update Supes, who takes both missiles out. He saves the nerve gas, though, to make an antidote. Even wrapped up in Wonder Woman's magic lasso, Kobra still orders his troops to attack, but Lady Eve declines, refusing to sacrifice any for him; planning on bringing the cult back under her leadership. Kobra ends up in maximum security, although without his trademark hood he looks like Lex Luthor!
I still don't have all of this series, which is mildly disappointing, but just means there's still some out there yet to be read. Previously, we've seen the last issue, #6, and #30; although we probably saw some of the later Justice League Unlimited as well.
6 comments:
I wanna say for me at least, Kobra peaked with Flash (Vol.2) # 100. Probably, maybe, arguably, before then for some others, but that’s the last time I felt he was written as a somewhat credible threat.
I initially questioned why Lady Eve was used as her name, but then the more I thought about it, that’s actually not a bad name to use. Why? Biblical reference/easter egg since Eve was tempted by a serpent. Not sure if that was intentional or not, but kudos to the writer for putting that one in there.
Lady Eve’s been around a while- she was introduced during a scheme where Kobra was operating under the alias of Adam and I guess they never got around to changing her code name the next time she appeared.
You want some good Kobra, you should go back to the original series- that was wild and his backstory is insane. He also got used well in the original Outsiders books (yet another reason for me to plug the original books). But yeah, I’ll admit he’s an old-school character that doesn’t really fit what more modern writers and readers seem to be interested in.
I think I mainly saw Kobra in Suicide Squad, where he's hurt a little bit because 75% of the scheming and pitting of the different intelligence agencies against each other is Waller pretending that it's Kobra.
It feels like there ought to be something you can do with Kobra. Charismatic guy who inspires legions of followers to burn the world at his command. Maybe he's too over-the-top with the outfit and the elongated "s" stuff?
I have a couple old ones here or there--I wanna say, 5 STAR SPECTACULAR maybe, where Kobra kills his good twin, Batman swears vengeance, maybe doesn't catch up to him until the Outsiders? Or the one where Kobra appears to have the late Ma and Pa Kent? But I liked a brief shot in MANHUNTER, where Mark's checking out wanted/bounty sheets, and there's Kobra: "Ooh, yeah, I'll get right on that one..."
And then, Manhunter's the one who beats Kobra man-to-man during the Janus Directive, which was no small feat since I think Kobra had whupped Batman in at least one confrontation during the Outsiders years. Bronze Age Batman isn't BatGod Batman, but he's no slouch.
And then a couple of issues later, Manhunter got trounced by some Hypno-Hustler knock-off he thought was an easy bounty. Good days and bad days.
I think that’s what he’s really missing is an arch-enemy. A guy like him needs someone recurring to foil his schemes and the whole ‘opposite number twin’ thing was a good hook for that.
Post a Comment