Cobra

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Voorhees apparently looks just like he did before he was mutated – but there are vast internal changes. His skeleton and joints are superhumanly tough and flexible. This gives him enhanced resilience and the ability to perform inhuman feats of contortionism.

The latter include squeezing through small holes. Apparently, large organs such as the brain can also be deformed and compressed without any hindrance to Voorhees. He can fit into openings that are but a few inches across (reportedly as narrow as ten centimetres in diameter).

This flexibility is the Cobra’s big trick. He uses it to easily reach secure areas by squeezing through under doors, via drains, through maintenance spaces, through piping, etc.. Very few places are built not to have such small openings.

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Muscles, ooh-ooh-ooh

His muscles are now arranged differently. This gives him superhuman strength – he can lift and throw an immobile Thor (640 lbs of super-dense Asgardian flesh), or snap Daredevil’s billy club with his bare hands.

Cobra also has the ability to selectively tense up any muscle like no human can. The Cobra uses this ability to :

• Slither at amazing speeds.
• Exert great crushing strength after wrapping himself around a person or object.
• Climb up, down or sideways at formidable speeds.

With his strength and flexibility, one would expect the Cobra to have superhuman durability. Yet in most cases he has been about as resilient to punches as a well-trained, athletic man – and sometimes even more easy to punch out than that.

Voorhees can be very hard to permanently damage. Breaking bones or bursting organs, for instance, is obviously going to be quite hard. But conking him unconscious can be done by any strong, determined person who can hit him.

Other assets

The Cobra can move at blinding speeds. It is nigh-unfeasible to hit him if he focuses on dodging – but not as hard as he thinks, either, given the speed and accuracy some of his opponents. Generally speaking it’s very hard to catch him. Even people with superhuman reflexes, such as Spider-Man, will usually be surprised by how quickly and oddly the Cobra can move.

The Cobra once demonstrated an odd ability. He just stood there, gently swaying back and forth and staring at Spider-Man with a nearly mesmerising gaze. Voorhees then spurted into action with lightning speed.

In DC Heroes RPG terms this is Charisma (Intimidation). He can use it to pretty good effect if he’s willing and able to back it with Hero Points  and his opponent doesn’t expect that trick (most won’t).

One of Cobra’s recurrent mistakes is that he tends not to spend Hero Points whilst wrestling. He’s very confident in the power of his cobra grip, and assumes that nobody can break it barring massive superhuman strength. Strong, well-trained heroes can thus his grip with extraordinary effort, and the Cobra will be too surprised to adjust in time.

Gear

Though he was apparently not a very good lab assistant, the Cobra is able to design and built his own Gadgets. While his work does not include much in the way of sophisticated electronics and computer science stuff, it’s solid small-scale engineering and chemistry.

For more details about his equipment, see the game stats.

History

Born in Rotterdam, Klaus Voorhees later became a US citizen. His life in the US did not go very well, though, and he ended up in prison for unrevealed reasons. After serving his time, Voorhees found work as a lab assistant.

Though his ex-convict status was a definite hindrance, his employer was willing to give people a second chance. A toxicologist, Professor Shecktor was often called “the Albert Schweitzer  of India” due to his work on antidotes for dangerous native species of snakes.

Despite Shecktor’s efforts, Voorhees remained a bad seed. His envy and bitterness far outshone the quality of his work as an assistant. As Shecktor made headway toward an universal snake bite antidote, Voorhees grew consumed by jealousy and decided to pass the discovery as his own.

His “foolproof” plan was to :

• Free a nearby cobra.
• Have it bite him and Shecktor.
• Use the (untested) experimental antidote to save himself.
• Deny it to Shecktor so he would die.
• Claim that the antidote was his.

The cobra freed by the assistant did bite him and Shecktor, but Voorhees had chosen an animal which had been irradiated as part of an experimental protocol. The antidote did save him, but the combination of experimental serum and radioactive cobra venom had severe side effects.

A sound of thunder

Furthermore Shecktor did not die instantly. He lingered on long enough to explain what was going on to the authorities. His former student Dr. Donald Blake, who happened to be in India, found the good professor while he was still alive. Blake decided that Thor would avenge the senseless death of Shecktor.

Voorhees got extremely lucky, though. The combination of chemicals in his veins gave him cobra-like powers, much like with Peter Parker. Before he had even left India, Voorhees called himself the Cobra and somehow got himself a super-villain costume and snake-themed weapons.

He then commandeered a jet to take him back to the US. In a state of blatant megalomania and convinced that he was invincible, the Cobra‘ planned to force a chemicals company to duplicate the mutagenic compound to create an army of beings like himself.

Thor had followed the Cobra, though, and foiled him. The Cobra escaped and tried to take a random hostage (Jane Foster, obviously). Though that gambit failed it still allowed Voorhees to escape from the thunder god.

Enter Mister Hyde

The Cobra apparently decided to gain his revenge on Thor, but had to flee after a brief encounter manifestly turned against him. Sneaking into a random apartment as he ran, the Cobra happened upon renegade chemist Calvin Zabo.

Conflict erupted and Zabo turned into Mister Hyde. However the villains stopped fighting when Cobra realised that Hyde was an enemy of Thor. They then allied to bring the thunder god down.

The allied villains made a number of attempts against Thor during the following years – see the first Mister Hyde writeup for more detail. The first attempt, using a number of ruses and technological devices, nearly worked as Thor was successfully deprived of his weapon. But in the end the villains lost and were arrested.

(At some point during his early career, the Cobra was pulled into the future by Arthur Zarrko the Tomorrow Man to confront the Thor Corps. The Cobra was but one a number of a number of opponents from Thor Odinson’s past, as well as the future and present of the various Thor Corps members. Like the others, Cobra was sluggish and disoriented from the time travel, and he may not be able to remember the incident.)

The partnership continues

A second attempt by Cobra and Hyde against Thor failed, even though they were backed by Loki. The evil trickster had enhanced Hyde’s strength and Cobra’s speed and advised them to take Jane Foster hostage (again).

After this defeat the villainous duo largely gave up on Thor. They had just seen how their credible, well-executed plan conducted with power enhanced by a god had just crashed and burned against Thor’s sheer might and resourcefulness.

The Cobra and Hyde were among the numerous super-villains summoned by Doctor Doom to foil the marriage of Susan Storm and Reed Richards. Like the rest, the villainous duo was under the influence of Doom’s Emotion Charger, and performed well below their usual competence. Cobra was defeated by Captain America.

All villains drawn in by the Emotion Charger were repelled via an alien sub-atomic time displacer, and the marriage took place after all.

First clash with the man without fear

The Cobra soon managed to escape from prison, and to free Hyde. Their attempt to re-establish themselves led to a clash with Daredevil. Murdock was then at a fairly early stage in his career (but already wearing the red costume – historically, the yellow and black costume only lasted for six issues).

Though they pretty much defeated Daredevil, Hyde insisted on torturing DD with a senses-destroying serum of his design. He refused to just kill him off as the Cobra advocated. DD tried to fool them into believing that he was fully recovered, but they soon realised the truth and recaptured him.

Seizing one of their frequent quarrels as a diversion, DD nevertheless defeated the Cobra and forced Hyde to flee, by fighting an entire battle under cover of darkness.

Hyde eventually broke the Cobra out of prison when he needed his help for a heist at the Guggenheim . However they and their ally, the Jester, were easily defeated by Daredevil.

Serpent Squads

In 1973, Cobra assembled one of the first snake-themed groups, the Serpent Squad. He burst two brothers out of Sing-Sing – the Viper and, via some zoological tour de force, the Eel (no wonder herpetology-lovin’ professor Shecktor was displeased by Voorhees’s work as an assistant). The brothers wanted revenge over Captain America and the Falcon, and the Cobra agreed.

The first assault against Cap and the Falcon didn’t work. The Serpent Squad retreated and armed themselves with guns designed and built by the Cobra. The second assault didn’t work either, and the Squad was knocked out.

Apparently, the international terrorist Madame Hydra liked the Serpent Squad concept. A few years later she assembled a second Serpent Squad based on the first. She personally killed the original Viper so she could take his name. The Viper then had hireling Princess Python free Cobra and the Eel from prison.

The Serpent Crown affair

Madame Hydra told them that the original Viper had been killed by cops, and the bought it. The Cobra predictably attempted to claim leadership of the Squad, but the Viper outfought him and poisoned him, forcing him to yield.

The Squad, allied with the Atlantean warlord Krang, worked on recovering major mystical artefact the Serpent Crown. They clashed with Captain America, now operating under the name and costume of Nomad, but they all managed to escape from him. The Squad was on a roll, and kidnapped Roxxon president Hugh Jones, continuing to stay one step ahead of Nomad during this classic plot.

However, the Cobra and the Viper got boxed in by the police, and an armed siege situation broke out. Trapped with a nihilistic terrorist amidst a desperate gun battle, the Cobra was out of his depth. He had a nervous breakdown, hallucinating that Mr. Hyde was coming for him.

After Nomad intervened, the Viper gunned the Cobra down for his cowardice, but he survived the siege and was rushed to an ER.

Daredevil returns

Voorhees recovered and was imprisoned. However, Hyde needed him for the next crime he had planned and contacted him in prison. Cobra reluctantly accepted. Voorhees easily escaped from his prison, knowing that Hyde would foil any direct attempt by the police at recapturing him.

Their plot was nearly foiled by Daredevil but the villains escaped with their prize, which Hyde used to perform enhancements to his serum.

The villainous duo then defeated Daredevil. Uncharacteristically, it was now the Cobra who wanted to make their opponent suffer whilst Hyde just wanted to kill him outright. Cobra won that exchange and they left DD bound at the mercy of a lion (on top of a Manhattan building – long story). But DD escaped and defeated them.

The green-garbed gangsters returned a relatively short time later, though. They again succeeded in capturing Daredevil. Their “employer” the Purple Man then pitted DD against Cobra, Hyde, the Jester and the Gladiator to watch him die. His opponents’s lack of teamwork and the arrival of Paladin led to the victory of Daredevil.

The 1980s begin well

The Cobra eventually escaped from prison – but this time around he refused to free Hyde. Voorhees left alone despite his ex-partner’s pleas. Continuing to adjust his expectation downward, the Cobra became a jewels thief, and was fairly successful.

Spider-Man managed, with some difficulty, to apprehend him. However the Cobra fled within seconds of being arrested, as the police severely underestimated his speed and flexibility.

After this comically easy escape, the Cobra continued to steal jewels. He improved his MO so he would steal from police evidence rooms. The Cobra thus became very, very rich.

When he heard about an eccentric financier being accused of embezzlement, the Cobra leveraged his newfound wealth to procure five mils in untraceable cash within hours. This allowed the financier to exonerate himself. In return, the man gave Voorhees ownership of one of his posh apartment buildings, which included many unusual features.

The shadow of a monster

Voorhees then heard that the madman Hyde had launched a gambit to firebomb the whole of New York City just to kill him. Thankfully, the demented plot had been foiled by Captain America and zee ever spiritaid Batroc… zee Leapair ! Knowing that the very incarnation of bestial cruelty was after him considerably darkened Cobra’s life.

Spider-Man did manage to apprehend the Cobra again, months after their first clash. But as Spidey was swinging toward the police station to drop Cobra there, the revenge-driven Hyde found them. Burdened by his prisoner, Spider-Man found it impossible to evade Hyde.

Parker eventually tossed the Cobra at Hyde, with some webbing on Voorhees’s helm so he would stick to Hyde’s hands. He then threw a spider-tracer at Hyde’s cloak.

Thus, after Hyde broke off the encounter, knocked the Cobra out and dragged him to his apartment to torture him, Spider-Man easily found him. Spidey defeated Hyde, and came back just as the Cobra freed himself from Hyde’s special bonds. Voorhees, ground down by weeks of looking over his shoulder to see if Hyde was coming for him, broke down and surrendered to the police.

One-man riot in Ryker’s

Both the Cobra and Mister Hyde were imprisoned on Ryker Island. Predictably, Hyde had an episode and went on a successful one-man prison riot to kill the Cobra. Hyde inflicted considerable damage to the guards, infrastructure and vehicles. The panicked Cobra fled, but was nearly killed after the berserk Hyde broke the special restraints holding Voorhees.

Running into Spider-Man and the Black Cat, who were investigating Hyde’s trail of destruction, the Cobra begged them to defend him. He then sneaked off to grab a spare costume and come back to kill Hyde and put an end to the nightmare. Between his three opponents, Hyde was eventually subdued. However, the Black Cat nabbed the Cobra under the same collapsing wall as Hyde.

The new Society

In the mid-80s, the Cobra was among the snake-themed criminals invited to join an organisation very loosely akin to his Serpent Squad of yore. Sidewinder organised his Serpent Society as a business venture. It came complete with brochures, medical coverage, bonuses, laundering processes and marketing/sales drives. He further offered his teleporting ability as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Very interested in the concept and the safety it would buy him (especially from Mister Hyde), the Cobra was apparently one of the firsts to sign up. He immediately went on a field operation along with Anaconda and the Rattler.

Captain America spotted the Serpents during that capper. While Cobra decided not to fight such a formidable enemy, Anaconda credibly engaged Cap in a slugfest, and the Rattler deflected the legendary shield when Cap threw it at them. Cap only managed to capture Anaconda, who was almost immediately sprung from her cell by their boss.

Sidewinder quickly identified the source of the leak as being the Constrictor, who had refused his offer. Sidewinder sent Anaconda (accompanied by the Cobra) to beat him up, which she heartily did. Impressed after having witnessed the first demonstration of the power of the Society, the Cobra had found a new home.

Fear the Viper

As with most founding Serpents, Cobra was part of the first documented big contract of the Society – the murder of MODOK. Captain America got wind of the operation and intervened, ambushing and sucker-punching Cobra. Cap ultimately failed, though, and MODOK was iced (well, for a time).

The Cobra remained a dutiful member of the Society, even having a crush on his friend and fellow Serpent Diamondback (Rachel Leighton). However, one of his old nightmares would come back, as the Viper decided to take over the Society.

Cobra sided with the Viper. He was simply too intimidated by the woman’s manic intensity and the fact she once gunned him down in a fit of psychotic, nihilistic rage.

Serpentine chaos in Washington

The Cobra was sent, along with mission leader Copperhead and fellow peon Boomslang, to poison tap water reservoirs in Washington D.C.. They were given a mutagenic compound that turned much of the population, including the POTUS, into snake people.

Due to a mistake while exfiltrating via the sewers, the three Serpents ended up fighting their way through the utter chaos of Washington./ The Cobra discovered with some amazement the effects of the fluid they had dumped into the reservoirs.

When they ran into Diamondback, who had called Captain America for help, the Cobra explained that he was a double agent. He said that he was pretending to follow the Viper whilst remaining loyal toward Sidewinder. This was a lie – something the Cobra impulsively blustered out not to disappoint his friend and secret flame Diamondback.

He then fled to immediately carry out an assassination attempt on the Viper, who had been captured by Cap’s support team. Nomad deflected the Cobra’s darts, and the Viper managed to free herself and run off toward the White House.

The Cobra realised he was now stuck and that everyone would try to kill him. The only thing he could do was to try and take the Viper out, much in the same way he had come to realise years before that he would need to kill Hyde to ever live free of the fear.

The wake of the coup

Wandering among the chaos of the capital, Cobra got lucky. He spotted the Viper as she ran away from the White House after nearly killing President Reagan. The Cobra took her out (likely by shooting her with poisoned darts from ambush).

Voorhees then tried to negotiate with Cap, offering him custody of the Viper in return for leaving 24 hours to the Society to flee.

Cap refused. Howbeit this didn’t change much since the authorities were overwhelmed and had better things to do than deal with the Society. The Cobra had the Serpent’s base evacuated in time to avoid arrest.

In the wake of the Viper’s failed coup and Sidewinder’s departure, Cobra was the de facto leader of the Society. He started fronting for it and negotiating contracts with employers.

He also, somehow, managed to have both the people who had betrayed Sidewinder and the loyalists working together. This likely was achieved by making it acceptable for everyone to pretend that nothing had happened.

Leader of the society

One Society contract obtained by the Cobra was to recover mystical artefacts for Deviant priest Ghaur and Atlantean terrorist Llyra. The Society clashed with no less than the X-Men and was soundly defeated.

Worse, they then discovered that they had been double-crossed by Sidewinder and double agent Diamondback, taking their revenge for the treason of most of the Society and the Cobra’s cowardly lies. As a further insult, Sidewinder gave the Society a 10% cut for having done the grunt work in his stead.

Cobra’s leadership was now precarious. Admittedly, there was no real contender for the top position and the Society was still making decent revenue. But Cobra was clearly not Sidewinder and even without the Ghaur/Llyra debacle, everything was set on a tepid, greasy downward slope. Voorhees had to do something.

Description

See illustration.

Personality

Voorhees started his career with enormous confidence in his powers. He was certain that he could beat Thor, that nobody could oppose him, that he would conquer everything with an army of snake-men (who, somehow, would all obey his orders), etc.. He spoke as a grandiose, super-powerful villain of the Stan Lee generation.

This changed fairly rapidly as he came to measure the bestiality and power of Hyde, and the sheer might of his frequent opponent Thor. His inflated ego gradually shrank away. The Cobra eventually became a cowardly, underhanded weasel.

However, tthis descent took years. During much of the era covered by this writeup, he was trying to affirm himself as a leader, a technologist and a master villain.

It never actually worked, though. He was constantly forced back into the position of either the loser or the lackey. Still, as often, the image as a cowardly loser many people have of the Cobra is based on a relatively specific set of appearances and wasn’t generally true.

Hate, fear and arrogance

The Cobra and Hyde hated each other’s guts. They routinely fought, sometimes even physically. However they realised that they were much stronger working together, as their time against Thor had made clear.

Thus they endured their alliance to get rich and remain out of prison. Presumably, they had a number of successful but undocumented capers as a duo during that phase of their career.

Many of their fights stemmed from Hyde’s sadism, which led him to impose some unwise decisions for the sake of cruelty. The Cobra actually was the voice of common sense and pragmatism in many of those spats, but Hyde could not be denied.

The Cobra has a deep love of grandiose, haughty, elaborate Stan Lee-style megalomaniacal villain dialogue, presumably to cover up his emerging feelings of inadequacy. He talks big, and he tries with all his heart, but he just lacks the fortitude. A lot of his patter relies on comparing himself to a real cobra and playing up the power and deadliness of these adorable reptiles.

The Cobra is chiefly after money, to some extent after power, and to an extent after proving himself to be a real badass, leader and genius.

Quotes

“Never mind the speeches, strong man — just get the loot ! Power isn’t everything ! Without the Cobra’s superior stealth you’d still be languishing in jail !”

“I’ll prove that my own snakelike skill is far more valuable than your clumsy, over-rated power !”

“Nice try, masked man… but nobody can free himself from the Cobra’s grip !”

“Make haste, you slithering simpletons — or you will never be worthy to work with — the Human Cobra !”

“You fast-talking fools ! You are obviously not intelligent enough to recognise danger when you see it — and that is more than enough to destroy you, I promise ! […] You have never seen me, cretin — and my blood courses with the venom of a radioactive cobra — so I am not completely human !”

“Here I am, fool ! I possess far more than just the speed and cunning of a human serpent ! I think you’ll find that my strength is far greater than that of an ordinary man ! You cannot survive the crushing coils of the Cobra !”

“Idiot ! In closing off this alley with your accursed webbing, you have sealed your doom ! A cobra is deadliest when cornered !”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Copperhead ! I was taking on the likes of Thor when you were knocking over candy stores !”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Marvel comics.

Helper(s): Peter Piispanen, Darci. Two illos from rapsheet.co.uk .