These were the bad guys from my two favorite cartoons I watched as a kid. When you compare thme, which group of villians is more intresting. I'm going to go with Cobra. Cobra Commander simply looks cooler than Megatron and Destro was actually competent compared to Starscream. Also Cobra had alot of intresting vehicles such as the Hiss tank, and BATT robot's and the Terror Dome, which sort of balanced out the fact that the Decepticon's could transform into vehicles. Cobra also had alot of cool headquarter's and the Decepticon's never did. The autobot's at least had the ark but it seems like the Deception's were always hanging out in rock quaries(wrong spelling). As for the comic books I also felt the GiJoe comic gave Cobra villians more depth. We sort of got to understand who Cobra Commander was and Destro and I loved things like the civil war they had and it was fun seeing them sort of ground them to more real world motives(at least in the early issue's). Jason
I preferred the Decepticons and found them more interesting. Didn't read much of the comics for GI Joe but I've read a lot for the Transformers both the old and the new, so I've very heavily biased towards them in that case.
Well considering Megatron was able to scare the crap out of Cobra just by himself I would have to go with the Decepticons, plus the cons got to kill their primary enemy in their cartoon film, Cobra didn't.
Cobra was more interesting. But I always like GI Joe much more than Transformers so I am very biased.
Neither of them were particularly good at their job, but at least with Soundwave, you could always guarantee there'd be a good DJ present. So I'm going with the Decepticons.
Cobra. The decepticons are just bad guy versions of the good guys. That's boring the way they presented it. Cobra was a deep organization with, like the above poster said, a kick ass civil war and a lot of political backstabbing and stuff.
Considering they were amoral (immoral?) giant robots that could transform themselves, the Decipticons should've been more effective. Cobra was a collection of losers, sociopaths, psychopaths, warmongers and thugs...much more amusing. Though the cartoon made Cobra wanting to take over the world just because (their political philosophy was to be explained in a planned episode, but was dumped when Cobra La was greenlighted). The comic gradually took Cobra's murky motives (cool and mysterious) and made them mostly interesting in selling weapons and encourage conflict...just for greed. Aside from Cobra Commander's tiresome revenge motives, the whole damn organization became the same as Destro's M.O.. And Destro became a near-good guy, thus following the anti-hero trend that's destroyed so many great baddies. Can't kill them, they can't really win, but they are so popular...slide them over into the good camp. But at least he never turned into a T-Rex or some shit. Winner: Cobra.
There is more depth into Cobra as why they are evil than the Decepticons, though they started fleshing out why the Decepticons went evil.
In the cartoons: The Deceptacons. Despite the bad writing, their motivations made sense and you understood what they were after. Each character was easily identified, most had a distinct personality with lots of power plays and backstabbing, and they just looked cooler. In the movies: Cobra (sans the Commander). For all the same reasons above. To this day I can barely tell who's who in the Transformers movies. The sole exclusion is Soundwave who I thought they updated brilliantly. The main thing I hated about Cobra was that everyone was basically a magically-controlled -- I'm sorry, "nanite"-controlled -- slave. Villains are so much cooler when they have their own free will and motivation.
Cobra. They always struck me as a slightly exaggerated version of the hierarchy of just about any dictatorship. A gaggle of criminals, wierdos, fetishists, and ne'er-do-wells with too much license to do just about anything and not only get away with it, but be rewarded for it. The anti-society. (Though I did dig that one scene in the comic where CC goes off on Raptor for being dressed like a bird.)