Croc Master

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When I was a kid, I inherited my brother's smattering of G.I. Joes as he grew older and unfortunately, they were often missing their accessories. I was also fairly ignorant of who most of the characters were, since the Sunbow and DIC cartoons didn't feature all of them, so I had absolutely no idea who Croc Master was and didn't until this week. I think I mostly used him as a heavy muscle/brute whenever I had the Joes throw down with Cobra. He certainly fit the part and the more I look at him, the more I realize that Croc Master bears a strong resemblance to another black mask wearing, musclebound comic book character: Bane, from DC Comics.

JIM SMASH

Clearly, I was not the only one. The resemblance is unintentional, obviously - Croc Master predates Bane by a half decade and unless Chuck Dixon, Graham Nolan, or Doug Moench were fans of the G.I. Joe comic or action figures, it's a purely coincidence.

Speaking of comics, his history there is interesting. Prior to his membership in Cobra, he wrestled crocodiles for a living and even started a business aimed at selling the reptiles as home security. Now there's a business model, what I like to call the "Screw ADT" Plan:  Put a couple crocodiles on your property and you'll never have to worry about burglers, murders, salesmen, or the inevitable visit from Child Protective Services. Cobra somehow heard of this guy and decided to scale his idea up, so they hired to use his crocs to guard the swamps of Cobra Island. Yeah, in the comics, Cobra had their own island, formed after they tricked the United States into launching a nuke at a fault line in I believe the Gulf of Mexico. Brilliant. Anyway, he showed up for work with a bunch of pissed off, psychotic crocodiles and let them loose in the swampland. According to My Useless Knowledge, he then spent the rest of his tenure with the terrorist organization sleeping and collecting paychecks.

During the Cobra Civil War between Serpentor and a fake Cobra Commander, Croc Master sided with the former and after the United States decided to send in the G.I. Joes to help Serpentor (no, seriously), he created a path for them through the swamp. His ultimate fate was not a good one. After the civil war ended (his side lost) and the real Cobra Commander returned, Croc Master was tossed into a freighter along with the fake CC, the real one's son (now there's a story!), and a few others, which in turn was buried under a collapsed volcano. No idea what exactly he did to incur Cobra Commander's wrath, unless it was the civil war thing, but damn, he really pissed him off!

It's disappointing that I never got all the cool accessories that came with my handed down Croc Master, especially the pet crocodile! The newest version of his toy though looks even cooler.

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Look at all that stuff!