The Black Card

 

Most supervillains work for the BOL, either because they truly believe that what they do is “value creation” that intimidates the “willfully weak” masses into bettering themselves, they like the rules the BOL operate under as they keep their skirmishes with superheroes from becoming too heated, or they like the cover the BOL gives them as “good” supervillains. But not all supervillains work under the BOL. The Black Card, named for their calling card left on the bodies of victims and wreckage of targets, is one such group of supervillains. 

 

Formed back in the 1980’s by an old, jaded soldier, the Black Card works for money, and only money. They proudly represent every negative stereotype of mercenary groups. They do not fight for country, or philosophy, or morality, and it is a sobering indictment of our world that they can be so universally despised and yet so successful in their business. They sell violence, no questions asked, and they’ve found many willing to purchase their services, so long as the transaction remains secret.

 

The Black Card is what information services classify as a “blank” group. They’re allegiance and motives are blank. They do not know why they’re being paid to kill this target or that target. They do not know why they’re being paid to blow up this city or that city. This is by design. Clients are far less likely to hire them when they’re concerned over being ratted out. All communications and monetary transfers between clients and Black Card are carried about through anonymous channels. 

 

Gear And Equipment

 

The Black Card makes use of standard force projection technology, both as shields and as offensive weapons. Their force projectors are in the form of rifles and can project bolts of kinetic energy either from the barrel or from locations chosen by the targeting scope. One must be wary in a firefight with the Black Card–the direction a force bolt comes from may not actually be where the attack comes from. Their force shields are, perhaps for the sake of cutting costs, built into the rifles. If their rifles are destroyed, Black Card soldiers are defenseless.

 

In addition to a force projector, every soldier in the Black Card is given a rhecite sword that can be modified into an entrenching tool, a back mounted cloaking device and tracker scrambler activated only when they need to escape (any sooner risks the scrambler being broken for the entire team), an antimatter cannon (though it looks heavy, it is in fact, extremely lightweight and weighs less than the force projector rifle), and an all-black uniform. They see no reason to hide that they’re the bad guys.

 

The Black Card is known for making use of telepathic battle helmets designed in the form of models from the Worlds War. These helmets protect the Black Card from telepathic attacks by providing them with a closed telepathic network that also serves them well in tactical planning and coordination. However, should one of these helmets fall into an enemy’s hands, the thoughts of the entire army are open to them. Because of this, the network is routinely monitored for irregularities. Failure to telepath the correct password during a check results in the helmet being removed from the telepathic network and the activation of a remote explosive hidden in the helmet. The helmets worn by rank-and-file soldiers are colored black while the helmets worn by officers are colored and are equipped with extra functions to suit their individual powers and abilities.

 

These helmets are also used to force victims to serve the Black Card as “zombie soldiers.” They particularly like pressing civilians into service as they make excellent human shields. The mind control used by the helmets is, fortunately, low-grade and easily broken by a nearby telepath or by simply removing the helmet. There are no lingering detrimental effects to the mind control and victims, once released, remember nothing of their enslavement, feeling as if they’ve just woken up from a long sleep.

 

Black Card makes use of two kinds of combat vehicles–a heavily armored helicopter called the Predator and a single-operator amphibious tank equipped with a powerful anti-matter cannon called the AD (Amphibious Destroyer). Intelligence services estimate that Black Card controls three Predators, enough to transport their entire organization, and six ADs, two for each Predator.

 

Organizational Structure

 

Black Card is a small, elite organization. They don’t like adding new members, as it splits the money. Most of their organization is composed of an indeterminate number of drone soldiers, which are relatively cheap. None are MS’s, and none are capable of complex operations without operator management. They are used for grunt work, guardian hostages, carrying equipment, and distracting superheroes as their human operators make their escape. 

 

The drones are of composed of a mixture of models, but most of them are X10 “Cyclops” models. Named so for their single eyed head cameras. Black Card uniforms hang loosely off Cyclops, as their bodies are nothing more than collections of metal wires. They can be set to a “squid” mode, in which they cease humanoid operations and scurry about like animals. In squid mode, they can hide in small places and ambush targets. 

 

X10’s are not typically thought of as strong robots, especially against superhuman opponents, but always remember that a force projector is deadly regardless of the hand that fires it. 

 

After drones, there are about 30 soldiers, used mostly for logistics and maintenance, though each is a trained combatant and capable of backing up the dedicated fighters of Black Card–the 8 superhuman “officers.”

 

Each officer’s birth name is unknown. They are known only by their supernames–Grizzly, Shark, Hammerhead, Buzzard, Vulture, Wolf, Scorpion, Hawk, and their leader, Snake. These 9 superhumans are not the most powerful superhumans on the planet, but they are organized, they are trained, and they are not at all adverse to using whatever immoral means are necessary to accomplish their goals.

 

The 9 superhumans function together as a single squad but are comfortable breaking down into smaller fireteams, typically consisting of 3-4 individuals, to accomplish multiple objectives. They break down into specialties. Grizzly, Hammerhead, and Shark are frontline fighters who draw the brunt of enemy fighter. They are often joined by Snake, who likes to lead from the front. Buzzard and his student Vulture are snipers. Positioned far from the battle, they provide covering fire. Wolf, Scorpion, and Hawk are single-target killers who focus on ambushing and taking down difficult opponents, often superheroes, while they’re distracted by the main fighting force.

 

The standard soldier wears a black helmet, but the 9 superhumans use colored helmets with extra functions, though some don’t wear helmets at all for various reasons.

 

No helmet: Snake, Wolf, Hammerhead

Blue helmet (focuses and regulates natal psychic power): Scorpion

Gray helmet (360 degree awareness): Buzzard, Vulture,

Green helmet (single-target hyperfocus): Hawk

Customized cap (vital scanner): Grizzly

White helmet (motion predictor) : Shark

 

Front-line fighters: Snake, Shark, Grizzly, Hammerhead

Snipers: Buzzard, Vulture

Single-target eliminators: Scorpion, Wolf, Hawk

 

Personnel

 

Snake

 

“We’re all tools. I just happen to be a very skillful tool. The sharpest knife in the drawer, you might say.”

 

The man known as Snake was, judging by blood samples left behind on superhero interrupted missions, a Black Terror during the Worlds War. He certainly looks his age with a head of thin, white hair untouched by the modern “phoenix tip” style in which the rejuvenated elderly make the roots of their hair dark. He wears a beret, and medals of his own design, though it’s his skill and experience that differentiate him from his comrades and gives him the authority to lead. The decoration is simply for his own vanity. 

 

How a man went from serving in one of the most prestigious armies in the Worlds War to commanding an infamous team of cutthroat mercenaries is a mystery, but rumor holds that he was asked by Allied command to take part in the eradication of civilian targets. This broke the man of honor that he once was and he became a man that respected only power. But judging by the aesthetics of his army, he has a soft spot for the way things looked during the war, if not for his participation in the war. His force projectors look like old rifles and his anti-matter cannons look like bazookas.

 

Snake is a devious opponent who fully commits to the policy of total war. No tactic is too immoral so long as it secures victory. He is, just like his associates, without honor. He commands his men not through respect but through the surety that a mission will turn a profit, and if that fails, fear.

 

Snake’s eyepatch is not actually an eyepatch. It is an advanced HUD and environment scanner that allows Snake to survey the battlefield with a glance. He can see through walls and across the electromagnetic spectrum. The eyepatch is capable of on-the-fly adjustment, so if an opponent proves too elusive to track, he soon won’t be.

 

Snake gets his codename from his power. In addition to enhanced strength and durability afforded by the old Black Terror formula, Snake can project “coils,” telekinetic waves of constricting force. He uses this power, as one would expect, to pinion his opponents while his henchmen slay them. It is not a sporting power, and Snake is not a sporting combatant. He will use every dirty trick in the book to accomplish his mission, be it taking hostages or threatening to blow up a city.

 

Snake has one virtue, perhaps only one–he is not a coward and always leads from the front. He will not run until it is evident that there is no hope of victory. If he has even a slight chance of accomplishing his mission, he will persist. His courage is also his weak point. On more than one occasion, he has been baited by a mouthy superhero into one-on-one confrontations without the aid of his teammates.

 

Snake is one of few members of Black Card who doesn’t wear a telepathic helmet. Instead, he utilizes a more complex telepathic system built into his spine. If the network is ever compromised, he can crash it all and substitute it with a network cast from his own mind, though this taxes his concentration.

 

Buzzard

 

“Opportunity knocks–like a bullet on a skull!”

 

Buzzard is an opportunistic sniper. He doesn’t like to fight up-close and works to support his teammates from a safe distance with his force projector. He is identified by a gray colored telepathic helmet which allows him to sense objects within 360 degrees of himself and a harness which allows him to fly and cling to the environment. The harness works by manipulating localized gravitational forces, similar to that of the classic Bulletman helmet. With it, Buzzard can take position in unorthodox sniping nests. He can attach himself to shear walls or rain death down on his opponents while his back is stuck to the ceiling.

 

His telepathic helmet, like all helmets worn by Black Card members, gives him a closed telepathic link with Snake, who uses his own eyepatch scanner to serve as Buzzard’s spotter, but it’s clear who in the end serves who. Buzzard fears Snake, and would never betray him. He’s so thoroughly intimidated that he wouldn’t even pull the trigger if he had Snake dead in his sights. Snake recognizes that Buzzard cowers before him, and has elevated him to his right-hand-man, confident that he can trust Buzzard above all his men to do what he orders.

 

As far as informational services know, Buzzard is a gadgeteer, all his powers comes from his equipment, and he has no natal powers to speak of.

 

Buzzard is a cruel, sadistic man. Mission parameters permitting, he will wound, not kill, opponents so he can watch his teammates finish them off. He likes to watch these “executions,” as he calls them, and finds them highly entertaining. He is your typical bully. He delights in causing pain from a distance where he’s safe, but up-close his courage reveals itself for the sham that it is and he will flee from even opponents he holds an advantage against.

 

Vulture

 

“You should be glad you got me as your opponent. I put mine to sleep before killing them. Ain’t that nice?”

 

Vulture wears a silver helmet, like his mentor Buzzard, and it grants him the same power of 360 degree awareness. Like Buzzard, Vulture is a sniper, though he operates at a closer range than his teacher. Buzzard will shoot a man from miles away while glued to the side of a building. Vulture will snipe a man from behind a tree a few yards away. He has to get relatively close because of his power–an “innervation effect.” When he’s close enough to a person, Vulture can force them to feel weak and tired. Even combatants with superhuman endurance can’t help but feel woozy. This makes Vulture an ideal supporter for the front-line fighters of Black Card. He softens up opponents and they finish them off–but it’s this arrangement that Vulture can’t stand.

 

Vulture is not as cowardly as Buzzard, but he has his own quirk that Snake hopes to one day beat out of him–cockiness. He hates killing from a distance. It feels too easy to him, too impersonal. And he hates how he’s treated as an “assistant killer” by the other members of Black Card. As far as he’s concerned, he doesn’t soften up opponents for them to kill, he seals their fate and they just bring the axe down on an already beaten opponent. He’s the killer, they’re the assistants. Because Vulture feels looked down upon, he will take it upon himself to blow his cover to reveal himself to those afflicted by his innervation effect so that they may know that he’s the one that’s beaten them, not the others. This, of course, leaves him open for counter-attacks.

 

Wolf

 

“I spared you the shame of having to continue, weak as you are. Die and be forgotten.”

 

Wolf is a fearsome close combat expert who earned his supername from the manner in which he killed his prey. He used his bare fists to maim them so that coroners concluded they had to have been killed by an animal.

 

Rumor has it that Wolf was an old martial arts master from the 1970’s, a decade which saw a great deal of development in superhuman martial arts. He became obsessed with self-improvement, even at the cost of his own humanity, and joined Black Card because he believed that only in the taking of life could he become stronger, and Black Card offered him all the people he could want to practice his deadly art on.

 

Though Wolf is capable of using ranged weapons, he prefers to kill with his bare hands, and delights in the feeling of blood oozing over his fingers. Reports suggest that he uses tiger style kung-fu, a style built of powerful rending and grabbing techniques that tear the opponent’s body like a tiger fresh meat.

 

In the field, Wolf acts as a lone wolf. Snake gives him an incredible degree of independence. He does not wear a telepathic helmet, claiming that the telepathic waves interfere with his concentration. He is unconnected from battle operations and given the liberty to choose his targets. This indicates a great deal of trust on Snake’s part. Perhaps the two have a history together?

 

Scorpion

 

“Engaging target. Target neutralized. Engaging target. Target neutralized. Engaging target…”

 

Scorpion is a cold-blooded killer. If he has emotions, he doesn’t show them, and rumor has it he’s not a man at all but an advanced combat robot. 

 

Scorpion wears a blue telepathic helmet customized to help him focus and control his superpower–a deadly telekinetic telson.

What’s a telson? A telson is a scorpion’s stinger tail.

 

Scorpion’s telson manifests as an electric blue ribbon that twists in the air and reaches toward nearby minds. When it touches a person, it poisons his mind with telepathic poison, fatal in minutes if not treated by a telepath, though it’s rare for Scorpion to engage a target that survives long enough to die from the poison. The primary advantage the poison gives to Scorpion is that it stuns his opponents with white-hot pain and sets them up for the kill. His telson also has a physical presence as a band of ectoplasm and can skewer opponents’ bodies even as it skewers their minds.

 

Scorpion is an ambush fighter. While the frontline fighters engage opponents, he scurries to a blindspot and lets loose with his telson.

 

Scorpion has a major weakness–his helmet is necessary for him to control his telson. Without it, he can’t use it without risking harming his teammates (which he probably doesn’t care that much about) or himself (which he cares quite a bit about, as he wouldn’t be able to kill if he’s dead).

 

Hawk

 

“I shot a superhero into the air, where he lands I care not where!”

 

Hawk takes his supername from two things. First, his green helmet alters his senses to focus with laser precision on a single target. Black Card uses Hawk like a sniper bullet. They send him to kill one enemy at a time. Second, he uses his power to kill people like a hawk. He can’t fly, as many assume, and in fact hates flyers as they’re able to mitigate the effects of his power. He creates telekinetic geysers that send opponents flying upwards. Then, like an eagle with a turtle in its claws, he lets gravity do the rest of the job.

Hawk loves his job. He approaches mercenary work with all the aplomb of a boy at playtime. To him, life and death are all a game, and he’s the best cheater in the game. He likes to collect trophies from his “playmates,” a scrap of clothing, a lock of hair, something to remember the fun times with.

 

Hammerhead

 

“…ARGHHHH!!!!”

 

Little is known of the brute known as Hammerhead. Outside of battle, he is silent. In battle, he screams. He is superhumanly strong and his mind is a telepathic storm. Those he focuses on in battle find their thoughts suddenly caught up in a cyclone of mental activity. They find it impossible to focus. They feel as if their heads might explode. Their heads feel like they’re being hammered, hence the name.

 

Because of his turbulent mental landscape, Hammerhead is not equipped with a telepathic helmet like most members of Black Card. If he was tied to their telepathic network, his storm would sweep over the network, dragging all connected members of the organization in.

 

Black Card treats Hammerhead as a living weapon. He is never sent in alone, and is always under the supervision of either Grizzly or Snake. It is possible that out of all the Black Cards, Hammerhead is the only one innocent of their numerous crimes. It is theorized that the telepathic storm can temporarily curse opponents with constantly rages inside his mind, limiting his mental facilities. If this is true, then Hammerhead is like a child soldier or a trained attack dog, devoted to the cause, deadly in a fight, but ultimately just a tool used by the truly evil.

 

Grizzly

 

“Sorry bud, just business.”

 

Grizzly is the favorite officer of the grunts owing to his amicable personality. He’s outright charming compared to Black Card members like Scorpion and Wolf. But the charm is just another weapon for this trained killer. He’s the team’s interrogator. He’s the one that gets hostages to give up security codes. He pretends to be the only one on the team with a heart, but in truth he’s just as much a sociopath as the rest of Black Card.

Grizzly’s telepathic helmet is customized to look like a cap, something Grizzly did to help make himself stand out from the other members. His helmet allows him to read a person’s vitals. He can tell when someone is wounded, and where. He can tell how long a torture victim can last. He can tell when someone is lying to him. In addition, Grizzly is a natural enhancile, and it is his superhuman strength that gives him his supername.

 

Shark

 

“Really? These are the targets? You can go ahead and kill them if you want, I’m going to look for more interesting prey.”

 

Shark takes his name from his superpower. He can project a “dispersal field” in front of himself that forces matter to part at his approach be that matter water, ground, or human bodies. His power makes him the point man of Black Card. He charges in, deflecting fire with his dispersal field, and his teammates come in to mop up after him.

With his dispersal field, Shark is able to “swim” through the ground, just like a shark through water. This allows him to ambush opponents from below, and to help him do so, his white telepathic helmet grants him the ability to read the minds of opponents and predict their next movement based on quantum computing. He knows exactly where and when to emerge to put the “bite” on an opponent.

 

Shark has one of the most impressive powers on the Black Card, and he knows it. His helmet was not cheap to create. Snake put the most money behind his most promising operative, and this was perhaps a mistake, as it’s turned Shark into an insubordinate operative. Shark is the one that challenges Snake. He’s the one that talks back to Snake. And perhaps one day his insubordination will grow beyond simple defiance. Only time will tell.

 

(Behind The Scenes Inspiration)

 

 

Black Card is inspired by a very interesting line of Remco action figures from the 1980’s–The Bad Guys.

 

Back in the 80’s, action figures were all about big good vs evil dramas. GI Joe vs Cobra (the enemy!). Autobots vs Decepticons. He-Man and his Masters of the Universe vs Skeletor and his Evil Warriors. You get the idea. Personally, I think it started with DC’s Super Powers line. That was the first toy line to push the idea that there was a good faction, the Justice League, against an evil faction, Darkseid and his Apokalips goons.

 

But early on, toy companies weren’t so sure how well evil toys would sell. They had no doubt little boys would want to play with bad guys, because its fun to be evil, duh, but what would Mom say about Little Timmy plotting acts of global terrorism with Cobra Commander? This is why a lot of action figure lines started very lopsided. Take for instance Transformers. In the original 1984 wave, there were about 3 times as many Autobots as Decepticons. It’s amazing they didn’t steamroll Megatron with that numerical advantage! And GI Joe released with 9 Joes (plus 4 Joes that came with vehicles) against a generic Cobra grunt and a generic Cobra officer. You couldn’t even get Cobra Commander on the cards, he was a mail-away figure.

 

Later lines would correct this imbalance. Thunder Cats, for instance, launched with 4 mutants plus Mum-Ra for the bad guys against 5 Thundercats plus Lion-O, and MOTU never had this imbalance, tending to keep an equal number of good guys against bad guys in their waves despite the lines age, but generally speaking in the action figure world, early on, you had a lot of good guys, but not a lot of bad guys.

 

Enter Remco to correct the imbalance with The Bad Guys, a line of action figures made to fight other action figures. Don’t take my word for it, check out the packaging–and allow me to offer a quick thank-you to Dallas Vintage Toys for the pics. If not for them, you guys would have to read the packaging with a magnifying glass. For some reason, other sites only use really, really small pics. I guess everything is bigger in Texas, even pics of hyper-obscure 80’s action figure lines.

 

The package states “The ultimate enemy of Sgt. Rock, GI Joe, MASH, and all mini action soldiers.” Despite being so straight-forward, there’s a lot to unpack about this line.

 

“The ultimate enemy” bit reminds one of the famous THE ENEMY! packaging for Cobra figures. Someone was trying to get clueless mothers to conflate the Bad Guys with Cobra Commander’s boys, as if the giant cobra illustration wasn’t enough. You know The Bad Guys spoiled more than one kid’s Christmas mockbuster style. And really, what could be more appropriate for a group representing pure evil?

 

“Mom! I wanted the Cobra bad guys!”

 

“But Timmy, these are the Cobra bad guys! See, they got a cobra on the packaging!”

 

“I wanted the guys that fight GI Joe!”

 

“But the package says they’re GI Joe’s ultimate enemy!”

 

Speaking of which, could they do that? Was that legal? Remco produced Sgt. Rock toys (more on that later) but they didn’t make MASH and they certainly didn’t make GI Joe. This feels like a legally grey area. I think everyone can agree that if, so say, Marvel produced a Spider-Man action figure that advertised “The greatest member of your favorite Batman toy lines!” that Marvel would be in trouble. Spidey isn’t part of Batman’s toy line. that’s false advertising, and a good lawyer could argue that Marvel was trying to profit off DC’s likenesses and indica, but what if the Spidey figure was advertised as being “The greatest enemy of Batman action figures!”?

 

I mean, in this case, it’s kind of true, as Spidey and Batman jostle for being the world’s most popular superhero, but would this be a legal overstep? The implication, as with the Bad Guys, is that Spidey is “part” of the Batman line, that they’re all part of the same “line,’ but it’s only implied here.

It’s interesting.

 

Also, MASH? Really? I don’t recall Hawkeye ever storming the terrorist encampment to rescue hostages. I don’t think the Bad Guys have much of a chance against Rock’s Easy Company or GI Joe, but I think they can take MASH. I guess every band of heartless mercenaries is owed an easy win.

 

And now, like I promised earlier, let’s talk about Sgt. Rock. I don’t want to give the impression that Remco was a knock-off factory…though sometimes they were. No one would deny that The Warrior Beasts was a MOTU knock-off. But they had some pretty solid lines. The Lost World of the Warlord was released in 1982 within months of the first MOTU wave, and may very well have beaten MOTU to the shelves, it’s hard to determine. It was based on several DC sword and sorcery properties. It mostly featured characters from The Warlord (an excellent series, by the way, I highly recommend it, it’s like John Carter meets Pellucidar) but it also had Hercules from the post-apocalyptic (was later revealed to take place in the same age as Atomic Knights and Kamandi) Hercules Unbound and Arak from Arak, Son of Thunder.

 

Since Remco was doing business with DC through The Lost World of the Warlord and soldier toys were picking up, they naturally made Sgt. Rock toys, as Rock is arguably the most famous war comic character of all time. And this is where they got the bodies for The Bad Guys.

What? You thought they used original bodies? Naw. They’re bad guys, remember? They stole them from the good guys!

 

The Bad Guys are simply recolored and retouched Sgt. Rock toys. You could easily pass them off as Easy Company night camo versions. In fact, some versions didn’t even bother erasing the DC brand on the figures. They just stuck Sgt. Rock bodies in the black paint and called it a day.

 

The Bad Guys are generic in the extreme. They don’t come with bio cards explaining their skills and history and they don’t come with different accessories. Unless they’re a pack-in for a vehicle (in which case they come with nothing), they all come with the exact same gear–a shovel (or entrenching tool, for military jargon sticklers), a trench knife, a bazooka, a rifle, and a very large radio backpack,

 

That The Bad Guys were ultra-generic invited speculation and sparked my imagination, and Black Card was the result. Why does Snake have an eye patch? Why doesn’t Hammerhead have a shirt? It brought me back to when I was a little Otto playing with my Fischer-Price castle and knights and deciding that that sword guy could shoot beams because his sword was sharp like a crystal, the mace guy had fire powers because his mace looked like a fire poker, and the axe guy’s axe could shapeshift because it looked like a big splat. I thin the axe guy was my favorite.

 

It was nice getting to channel those memories.

 

The crocodile sticker in the moat was also an insta-kill. Nothing survived the crocodile, not even the dragons. He was a neutral force in the never-ending conflict between black knights and gold knights. Any who dared violate his watery domain perished and were sent right to the dungeon, which was like a combination afterlife and drunk tank.

 

Original Wave

 

The original wave was produced in 3.75 inch scale, the same scale as GI Joes, naturally, and consisted of Snake, Hawk, Shark, and Scorpion.

 

 

You know, people think “mercenary leader with an eyepatch” nowadays, they think Big Boss, and a very different Snake comes to mind.

 

 

 

Several years before GI Joe would get their own Hawk, The Bad Guys were fielding this friendly looking chap. Aw look, he’s waving! He’s so happy to kill people! He came with both a grey helmet and a green helmet.

 

 

And here we have Shark, also known as Hawk with slightly different facial hair. He’s cooler than Hawk, because he’s got gray shoes that help his color scheme pop, and as everyone knows, sharks are cooler than hawks. They didn’t make the Street Hawks, after all.

 

Better jump back, it’s a shark attack!

 

 

And here’s the final member, looking very distinct with his smaller, squatter, blue helmet.

 

Is he a UN soldier? A terrorist operative? What’s the difference?

 

5.5 Inch Wave

 

 

Remco also released the first wave in 5.5 inches…sort of. There’s a lot of differences here. You still have Snake and Shark, but not as you know them, and new guys Buzzard and Wolf.

 

Why they released figures meant to play with 3.75 inch heroes, I got no idea. And since these four are the only ones made for this scale, I guess they didn’t have any idea either.

 

 

First up we have…Shark?

 

Yeah. Shark. Either Remco got the names confused (likely, let’s not pretend there were dedicated lore writers working at Remco) or Shark pulled a Starscream and ousted Snake. I told you Shark was the coolest one! He even plucked out his own eye as he became leader. That’s some Odin-level stuff.

 

 

And this…is Snake?

 

Either Shark was very merciful in his rise to power and used secret terrorist superscience to restore Snake’s eye…or he killed Snake and gave his supername to a fresh recruit, which is a total supervillain move, I love it.

 

Buzzard is one of my personal favorites, as he takes what made Shark stand out as a figure and adds a cool ammo harness. He probably has the coolest look out of all the figures, and it’s a shame he was only in the big figure line. The whole black jumper with grey accessories look is classic “bad guy army.” If Remco had just used Buzzard as a generic henchman and made a bunch of weirdo supervillains and terrorist leaders to boss him around, I bet The Bad Guys would have had more staying power.

 

 

And here’s Wolf to round out the set. Look at that head tilt, he knows he’s Buzzard but not as cool. The diamond on his chest does nothing for him.

 

2nd Wave

 

 

The Bad Guys was a flash-in-the-pan, and wouldn’t go on to have wave after wave of figures like other toylines which I feel is a shame. The concept for the line is solid–all bad guys, all cannon fodder, capable of filling out any supervillain’s army. But they did manage to produce one more wave of 4 figures consisting of Grizzly, Vulture, Hammerhead, and Wolf.

 

Remco seemed to try and make these last few figures really stand out. The only one that comes with a helmet is Vulture, and Hammerhead and Wolf are very striking. If the line continued, we probably would have seen stranger and odder Bad Guys. We probably would have gotten a sniper, surely, and at least three ninjas.

 

 

Check out evil Gung-ho here. “Grizzly.” A big “bear.” I get it. Like the shirtless Gung-ho, I’m sure Grizzly had an appeal to a certain demographic.

 

 

And this is Vulture, who is basically Shark but without the facial hair. He’s probably Shark’s right-hand sycophant.

 

For the life of me, I can’t find Vulture carded, and I’m not sure he even came as an individual figure. He may have been the dedicated pack-in toy for accessory kits, but more on that later.

 

 

Hammerhead is one of the cooler Bad Guys. He’s certainly the most distinctive, running around without a shirt, helmet, or facial hair. He radiates “Indiana Jones vs German mechanic” energy. I wonder how many boys stuffed him in electric fans?

 

It’s hard to see on the pic above (apologies, it’s hard to find good picks of Bad Guys online, go figure), but Hammerhead has a cobra tattoo on his chest, meaning that the cobra on the packaging isn’t just there to be there, the cobra is the personal symbol of the Bad Guys. Daring, Remco, daring!

 

 

And here’s Wolf, who looks very different from the Wolf that came with the big figures. Like Vulture, I can’t find him carded, so he might have been a pack-in.

 

Ninjas were huge in the 80’s. Look no further than the many, many ninjas that populated GI Joe for proof. Wolf seems to be the Bad Guy’s ninja master. He doesn’t wear a jumper, he wears a gi, and he doesn’t wear boots, he wears slippers. If only they put a mask on him to complete the look. His longshoreman cap makes him look less like a ninja and more like a terrorist getting ready for some after-shower coffee.

 

Accessories And Vehicles

 

Of course there were accessories and vehicles! Everyone had to have have accessories and vehicles back in the day! Even the Ninja Turtles, who you think, being ninja, would use stealthy acrobatics to move around, had the Party Wagon, and the Turtle Blimp, and the Pizza Thrower, and…

 

 

So close Remco, if you had called it the Hidden Ambush Nest for Gunners, you could have called it the HANG, which would have made the nameless pack-in character Hangman.

 

Rule of thumb–dug outs with machine gun batteries are fortifications for good guys, ambush nests for bad guys.

 

When I first got a good look at the nest, I thought I had finally found where Vulture came from, but no. The pack-in isn’t Vulture, the helmet’s wrong. What we got here is Scorpion but with a gray helmet instead of blue.

 

 

And here’s Snake with the guerilla outpost. Makes sense. He’s got a Che thing going on with his look, so you can see him leading commie thugs to purge capitalists from some banana republic and turn a once-thriving country into Zimbabwe.

 

Also, you missed another trick here, Remco–Guerilla Enemy Camp Outpost. GECO.

 

See, this is why you could never catch up to GI Joe.

 

 

And what’s this, what’s this, a trick with a twist? The guerilla camp, but with the silver-helmeted Scorpion instead of Snake?

 

Yeah, that’s how it was back in the day. Sometimes you got Beastman in your Skeletor package.

 

 

And here’s Scorpion again with the assault raft. Talented guy, huh? He’s a marine and an ambush gunner. Check out the SGT ROCK on the raft! Good lord, Remco, I know you just recolored the raft from the Sgt. Rock line, but put in a little effort, okay?

 

Though, I suppose you could say that they stole the raft from Easy Company. That would be kind of funny.

 

Another easy one–Assault Raft Invasion Scout Enemy, ARIES. Strikes beach heads like a ram. It’s a headbutt joke.

 

 

And here’s the RAM–Rocket Attack Mobile unit. They finally did the acronym thing! Good job, Remco!

 

It doesn’t come with an operator, though. Darn. I was hoping it would answer the question of where Vulture came from.

 

As you can see, the RAM came with the Bad Guys’ snake logo. Now why couldn’t the raft have those stickers?

 

 

And here’s the Powered Anti-aircraft Weapon–PAW. Again, there’s no pack-in figure, which is a shame. This feels like Grizzly’s signature weapon, because, you know, grizzly paw.

 

I wonder how many of these outside their boxes still have their spring-loaded bullets? It’s got to be less than 1 percent.

 

 

 

Now’s here’s a rare toy, maybe the rarest of all 80’s military toy lines, though I doubt it’s anywhere close to the most valuable.

 

I give you the Big Bad Chopper…which makes a very unfortunate acronym.

 

I can barely find pictures of the Chopper. I certainly can’t find any of the Chopper in box. It’s not even included on most lists around the Internet. From what little I can gather, it wasn’t just a helicopter, but an entire playset with rocks and flag and helipad. It sounds perfect for “catch the bad guy before he escapes in the chopper” games.

 

If I had to guess where Vulture came from, it would be this set. He’s got “evil pilot” energy, and while Remco didn’t put figures in with vehicles, I could see them putting a pack-in figure with a playset.

 

 

 

Here’s another rare one, but not as rare as the Big Bad Chopper. It’s the Battle action Amphibious Destroyer, the BAD.

 

A little on the nose with that one, Remco.

 

Battle Action Destroyer I get. It sure looks like it can do some destroying with that giant cannon on the back, though I pity the Bad Guys under the control of the kid that doesn’t believe in turrets controlled remotely from the pilot’s seat, because any Bad Guy operating that turret manually is getting picked up and tossed by Snake Eyes after he ninja-hops up to it.

 

Figure-archive.net is the only place on the Internet I can find that mentions the BAD, and they’re where I got the above images, so props to them.

 

Playset

 

 

And now, to close out, I give you the DC crossover I guarantee no one writing for DC knows about. You need a “The Dreaming first appeared in DC’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer comics” power level to know about this one.

 

I give you the Sgt. Rock vs The Bad Guys playset.

 

What does this mean for The Bad Guys? Rock fought in WW2, so are they Nazis? They can’t be Italians. It’s never Italians.

 

Say, you know who their black uniforms remind me of? Per Degaton.

 

 

Yeah, you know, Per Degaton! The JSA’s time traveling supervillain, sometimes partnered with the Nazis. The Bad Guys look like they work for him, and you know, someone had to get them from fighting Sgt. Rock in the 1940’s to fighting MASH in the 60’s to fighting GI Joe in the 80’s. Is this the secret origin of the Bad Guys? Is the true hypercrisis the secret DC-MASH-GI Joe crossover revealed only in hyperobscure toy lines?

 

So what does the playset look like?

 

Would you believe standard issue green vs tan army men?

 

 

 

 

You’d hope they would use original molds, but no. You got your generic army men in the generic colors. They don’t even have the Bad Guys in black! Talk about going off brand!

 

But to be fair, though the figures leave much to be desired, the playset itself is really neat. It’s a bombed-out European town, perfect for a Sgt. Rock skirmish.