Snake-Eyes (Dawn Moreno)

Dawn of justice. Rescued as a teen from a bleak life in Cobra. Honed into a ninja master. Inherited Snake-Eye's memories via Brainwave Scanner. Stealthy. Speedy. Deadly. You'd better believe Dawn's a Joe. One of the things that makes Larry Hama such a great writer is that he's not one to get precious with his own work. Like, Snake-Eyes is obviously the Joe to the entire fandom, but Hama wasn't afraid to kill him off for real - not a hoax, not a fake-out, an actual big time permanent death death. But he also recognizes how important Snake-Eyes is to the brand, which is why he introduced two separate replacements (to varying degrees of acceptance by the fans). Dawn was the second, and more popular, and that bio sums it up well: her family were Cobra agents, so she grew up in Springfield; while trying out for the lacrosse team, she impressed a visiting Cobra Commander, who wanted to turn her into a perfect soldier; unfortunately, a saved copy of Snake-Eyes' memories got accidentally downloaded into her brain, making her a problem for everybody. If you've read the comics, you'll recognize a problem with this figure right away. You see that line about wanting to try out for the lacrosse team? Yesh. Do you know a lot of adults who play lacrosse? Dawn was trying out for her high school team, being only 15 years old when she was introduced. Obviously GI Joe is a little loosey-goosey with its timeline (or else Snake-Eyes, Storm Shadow, Stalker, and all those other 'Nam guys would be pushing 80 by now), and she did seem to age in real time for a while at least, but she was still a teenager when she took up the name and costume of Snake-Eyes. And this is not a teenager's face, or a teenager's body. This is a grown-ass woman. So I guess she gets to age until she reaches the peer group of all the other Joes, then just stops? Like, she becomes friends with Helix and hangs out with Jinx, and all three of them are basically treated like the "youngsters," with no mention that Jinx joined the team 40 years ago or that Melix was already a grown-up before Dawn had her driver's license. It took a while before Dawn got her uniform "battle togs" in the comics - after being hand-picked by Cobra Commander, she was given over to Baroness and Zarana for training, but after getting be-Snake-Eyes-ified, she went on the run until the Arashikage Clan found her and began helping her deal with having two personalities in her brain. They're the ones who designed her new look. The figure includes two heads. The one she's got in the package is bare, revealing her full face (reminder: supposed to be a teenager) and molding her hair as a separate piece so it can be pulled back into a messy bun and still have a few loose strands that would never work were it all one molded piece. The second head has the hair down, but she's also wearing her... helmet? Hood? Whatever it is, it leaves her mouth uncovered, but gives her Snake-Eyes' iconic slatted visor. The original 1982 Snake-Eyes was, famously, designed to save on the nascent line's budget by being molded entirely from black plastic with no paint. Dawn is under no such restrictions, so while her suit is mostly balck, the visor and some padded sections on her sides and gloves are red, and she has silver armor plates on her shins and forearms. Her upper arms are bare, and she's got the Arashikage ䷾ symbol just below her collar - that's sculpted, but they've painted the lines on it cleanly. When Dawn went to train with the Arashikage, she was told she had "the build of a gymnast." Later, a character examining the aftermath of one of her fights said the mystery participant was "lithe and short of stature." Cobras using a missing persons flyer to search for her said she was 5'7", and yet this figure is over 6" tall and just as stacked as the rest of the ladies. She's got swivel/hinge ankles, swivel shins, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljoint/hinge hips, balljointed waist and chest, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, pectoral hinges, a balljointed neck, and a barbell head like them, too. Her stats are Covert Ops 3, Bladed Weapons 4, Stealth 3, and Ninjutsu 4 - all the same categories Boy Snake-Eyes had, but he gets 4's across the board, because her experiences with these are new while his are ingrained. Like so many Snake-Eyeses before, she's armed with an Uzi and a silenced pistol - when his mind took over in her body and together they stole a bunch of weapons from the Yakuza to go get some revenge, he picked old guns like this, so it makes sense this toy doesn't come with anything newer or fancier. The silencer can be removed from the pistol, and they both fit separately in the holster around her right leg. It's a very loose fit, though. She gets two swords that store in the included sheath backpack - presumably they're meant to be Morning Light, the ancestral sword of the Arashikage Clan forged by the swordmaster Onihashi, and its close copy, Evening Shade. Dawn has gained both of them in the books, and they look mostly identical, so it's possible these are they. The unmasked Dawn head has her hair up, so it won't be in the way of the swords, while the hair on the masked head blows to the side so it can be used at the same time as the backpack. Like we said, Dawn Moreno was the second replacement Snake-Eyes Larry Hama created, but she's definitely proved to be the more popular one - usually you'd expect "existing male character gets replaced by a woman" to get the the usual dimwits up in arms, but that doesn't seem to have been the case this time. This figure would have done better to remember Snake-Eyes is supposed to be a teenager, not an adult, but we're too excited to have her at all to quibble about that. I lucked out and found a single copy of her on the shelf at Walmart, but this is one I would have ended up ordering online instead of just letting her pass. -- 10/23/26 Who's the best "replacement" character in fiction? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.