Creation Story
Cobra had no faces. The organization Marvel launched in 1982 was a commander and a wall of interchangeable troopers, which is workable for a toy catalogue and useless for a comic, because none of them can carry a scene that needs a reaction shot. Larry Hama’s fix was to write someone who could.
“I created the Baroness out of whole cloth. She was a comic book character before she was a toy,” Hama told interviewer Christopher Irving in 2000, in a conversation later printed in Back Issue #16. In the same interview he gave the reasoning: there were no Cobra characters with faces at that point, and you cannot have dramaturgy without agents of expression.
The Baroness sits sideways to the rest of the G.I. Joe roster. Most first-wave Joes began as Hasbro figures. She was on the page in June 1982, on television in the 1983 Sunbow miniseries, and in the toy line in 1984, so her comics debut is the earliest date she has in any medium. Hasbro’s 1984 figure introduced her in a black leather outfit.
First Appearance: G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #1
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #1 carries a June 1982 cover date and went on sale March 2, 1982. Larry Hama wrote it, Herb Trimpe pencilled the lead story “Operation: Lady Doomsday,” and Bob McLeod inked it. Trimpe and McLeod also did the cover. The issue ran 46 pages and advertised itself on the cover as a blockbuster. Glynis Wein coloured it, Jim Novak lettered it, and Tom DeFalco edited; a backup story, “Hot Potato,” carried art by Don Perlin. The book falls inside the Bronze Age, which runs 1970 to 1983, so the Baroness is a Bronze Age debut.
The story opens on a press conference. Dr. Adele Burkhart, described as America’s top nuclear physicist, is denouncing the military for misleading her into work on a doomsday project. The Baroness and her men are in the room posing as reporters, and they take Burkhart out of it. That is the character’s introduction: she is already undercover when the reader meets her, and the disguise is the job rather than a costume choice.
Cobra holds Burkhart on a Caribbean island. Hawk briefs the Joes, the team knocks out an airfield and the communications station, and the assault goes in. Then Hama runs the same trick twice. Stalker pulls Dr. Burkhart out of a Cobra car during the fighting, and the woman is the Baroness in disguise. The real Burkhart ends the issue by throwing herself in front of Cobra Commander’s gun, and in the confusion the Commander and the Baroness get clear to Cobra’s true headquarters.
For a first appearance, the issue is unusually crowded. It carries the debuts of eleven Joes: Breaker, Clutch, Flash, Grand Slam, Grunt, Hawk, Rock ‘n Roll, Scarlett, Snake-Eyes, Stalker and Short-Fuze. On the other side are exactly two Cobras, Cobra Commander and the Baroness. Everything else in the organization is a uniform. That ratio is Hama’s argument for writing her, visible in the debut itself.
It is also her only first. She is a named, acting antagonist through the issue, so there is no cameo-versus-full split, no separate cover first, and no continuity first. The animated version followed in the 1983 Sunbow miniseries, voiced by Morgan Lofting, and the action figure arrived in 1984. The June 1982 comic is her earliest appearance in any medium.
Her file card fills in what the issue leaves out. The file name is Anastasia Cisarovna, a.k.a. Anastasia DeCobray, serial number 0501-AD, primary specialty intelligence, secondary specialty fixed-wing pilot. She is Cobra’s chief intelligence officer and a top lieutenant to Cobra Commander, working in espionage, cryptography, psychological warfare and disguise, which is the skill set issue #1 shows her using twice in 46 pages. The background is the spoiled offspring of European aristocrats, then student radicalism, then international terrorism, with no country named.
What she does after the debut is mostly Destro. She hints at a shared past in issue #11 (May 1983) and refuses to elaborate, escapes by plane with Scar-Face in #12 and bombs the island where Snake Eyes is fighting, finds in #14 that Dr. Venom left a vital component out of a Cobra toxin, and throws herself into an explosion to save Destro from Major Bludd in #16 (October 1983). In #19 (January 1984) she is captured and severely burned, then moved into G.I. Joe custody; she later had extensive plastic surgery after the burns. Hama eventually connected her to Snake Eyes through the death of her brother, the thread that turns Cobra’s intelligence officer into a personal antagonist rather than a job title. In #50 (August 1986) she helps Destro evacuate Springfield and suggests abandoning the rest of Cobra, and in the Cobra Civil War of #74 to #76 (1988) she backs Serpentor first and finishes at Destro’s side.