>>10487681>from what I've read over the decades (I've taken a lot from the comics, but a lot of fans have said similar shit)Base Vipers are not used much in all the comics. They are rare for most of the Marvel run. Cobra Ninjas show up and are used more than Vipers were, hell you could pour all the Viper types together including the famed lone OC Saw Viper (who had a equivalent rank of E-1of all things. That's right, the soon to be leader of the B.A.Ts that killed named Joes like Doc was just a psychopathic recruit that was using new experimental gear and drugs for the promise of two extra months pay) and you get close to the same amount of appearances of cobra ninjas. Hell Alley Vipers in the 90s were used and acted more like hired mercenaries than trained solders such as when dealing with that hostage situation in the 2nd encounter with Marvel Transformers ("Or what? Zarana don't sign our checks!"). Really nothing of the Marvel run(or even the DD run) implies they are anything but washed up military rejects at best, to just dumb thugs given guns at worse, which makes a lot of sense because as Larry Hama put it when dealing with these questions in 2002 "Terrorist organization operate more like circus, but you still send the troops out to march"
And I think the fans are just dong what is fun and lore building between the gaps. Cobra, like all of the toyline was just a fast and loses set up to sell toys as
>>10487628 rightly notes, they "didn't give two shits" how anything worked, so now years later people taking interest in the brand, old and new, are just being kids again and creating their own world of how things worked.
also imo the closet thing Cobra had to Marines in the comics was the red ninjas.
