>>9174555>>9174559Most everything is a joint venture, but you can't deny that Larry Hama had the most input.
Unlike Transformers, Hasbro didn't even have bad guys for the GI Joe line when they were planning on relaunching the line. Cobra was invented by the people at Marvel, including Hama. Characters like Baroness didn't even exist until she was written into the Marvel comics.
If you look Larry Hama's credited work, you'd know that he was also involved in the cartoons as well, which you mentioned. Guy was key to GI Joe's success.
Cobra Commander himself was characterized by Larry Hama, and what would he have been without the characterization? Go look at all the generic bad guys from the 80s, including Transformers, to understand why Hama's characters are more long lasting and known than generic world domination bad guys like Skeletor, Hordak, Megatron, Shredder, Mumm Ra, and many other villains that got revamped without any problem from their fanbases... unlike CC.
See also the people in these threads, bitching about movie Snake Eyes and how much they've changed from it, because they expect him to be the silent ninja Larry Hama wrote (which Hasbro just had as a generic masked commando, looking like he's ready to bust IRA holdouts in Ireland)
Lemme just point again at GI Joe EXtreme as what Hasbro does when they put their creative juices together all by themselves. Does anyone really want that?
Also, Ron Friedman a shit. I can re-read the Marvel GI Joe comic today and still enjoy it. Can't do that with the 80s GI Joe cartoon, because shit's retarded. Like most 80s cartoons. Even if the characters are all following the character bible that Larry Hama wrote, the writing was still mostly shit. So whatever Friedman did, it's like bad fanfiction to me.
