>>11197461>if you don't make it a large scale war then you basically have a cat and mouse gameBut that's boring. You can't keep them moving from one town to the next, because the point of anti-terrorist groups is to hunt them down. They're supposed to be pro-active, not reactive. It makes GI Joe look incompetent if they're not able to find an entire city of snakes. That works for a retarded 80s cartoon that had no continuity from one episode to the next, but there's a reason why the Marvel comics and the 80s GI Joe toy lore is irreplaceable.
Springfield worked as a major storyline, that was building up for 40 issues. It was eventually going to be discovered, because that's how stories work and any competent organization would find them.
This is why Cobra Island was created. It's the next step for Cobra and allows stories for another 40 years. Not only does it allow Cobra to work overtly, it still allows everything you're talking about. It's akin to the Cold War, where the US really can't do anything against a sovereign nation that is working within the laws of world. So you still have espionange, sabotage, etc, from both GI Joe and Cobra now. And since Cobra is working overtly, all eyes are on who they're allying with, instead of looking at the terrorist cells working within the US.
And that's more reason for GI Joe to exist, since the army isn't allowed to work within the US or even secretly in other countries. GI Joes is a secret military group, and you can ramp up how much more shit they get against a larger, international enemy
So all this is in service of a believable story AND for a toyline. I mean, we all enjoy bigger toys, right? Stuff like the HISS was purposely small so they can fit inside semi-trucks. FANGS were tiny. Marvel might not have created the toys for the GI Joe line, but they had to make sense of the larger vehicles Hasbro created for an increasingly popular line. Why would GI Joe need an entire aircraft carrier for a domestic terrorists?
