As I continue to chip away at Super7’s GI JOE Ultimates line, I’m here today to finally put Wave 3 in the bag! I’ve already looked at three of the four figures in this assortment: Scarlett, Storm Shadow, and The Cobra Trooper so it’s well past time to give the JOE’s Combat Medic, Doc, his turn! Dr. Carl Greer showed up early in the original Real American Hero line as part of the second series in 1983. I remember getting him along with a handful of other new figures for Christmas, and he tagged along on just about every mission after that. For some reason I also always had him drive the APC, but I don’t know what that was all about. Also a fun piece of trivia: Two of my favorite fictional medical doctors, Greer and Gregory House, both graduated from Johns Hopkins!

I won’t spend a lot of time on the packaging, since we’ve seen it so many times now. This third wave was the last to include the slipcover over the window box, but it also downgraded the glossy finish on the cardboard to a matte version of the green camo. The presentation still looks good, but Super7 progressively cost-cutting the packaging has convinced me to let these boxes go, except for the few exclusives I have. But enough about the package, there’s wounded JOE’s out there and Doc’s gotta get into the action!

The Sunbow cartoon design for Doc didn’t stray too far from the original RAH figure, and that’s reflected here. The fatigues are a darker, almost orange, khaki giving the deco some shelf presence. The sculpted details in the uniform are soft and fleeting, but that’s been the case with these toon-style figures. I don’t think they got the chest pockets quite right, as the cartoon uniform had what looked like vertical double pockets. There’s a slight hint of that here, but it’s not very well defined. I also don’t remember him ever having a holster in the cartoon, but I’m not going to complain about S7 adding a place to stow his pistol. The red crosses on his left chest and shoulders are actually sculpted as well as painted, and he has the red wrist cuffs and red belt seen in the cartoon, along with his white undershirt peeking out from inside his collar. I can nitpick some accuracy stuff here, but the figure still looks outstanding.

You get three heads to choose from: One smiling, one serious, and one shouting. All of these are great, but there isn’t a hugely noticeable difference to me between the first two, especially with the helmet on and obscuring the more severe eyebrows on the serious head. Each head shares the same helmet and I definitely recommend care when removing it, because those glasses look crazy fragile! Even popping the heads out of the tray made me nervous about breaking them. Now, with that said, I think the glasses look great. Yes, up close there’s a some white spray on the edges of the lenses, but it’s not that noticeable with the naked eye. The green tinting on the lenses looks great too. Should the frames be white? Nope! Not unless they’re referencing something I’m not familiar with. I don’t recall them ever being white in the cartoon. I’ve had some difficulty with tight heads on some S7 figures, but Doc’s noggins pop on and off really easy, which is comforting because again… those glasses can be worrisome! He must go through a lot of pairs on the battlefield.

The shouty head is well done and very expressive. They even sculpted some detail on his tongue inside his mouth. I don’t know that I’ll use this one that much, but I do really like it. It kind of looks like he’s shouting “MEDIC!” before realizing, “Oh, wait that’s me.”

You get the usual assortment of hands, including fists and some accessory-holding hands. You also get a set of white-gloved surgeon hands, which work well with the red arm bands to complete the glove effect.

Doc comes with both a medical case and shoulder bag. The bag is designed to hang on his right shoulder and has a printed caduceus on the flap. There’s also some paint on the buckle that is intended to hold the flap down. The medical case is white with a red cross printed on the outside. It opens up to reveal a bunch of supplies like scissors and bandages. I originally expected this to be just a sticker, but the contents are all sculpted and picked out with some paint. I like that the case has actual hinges, rather than just bendy plastic which stresses over time.

Greer also comes with two ways to launch signal flares. The first is based on the flare launcher that came with the original RAH figure. As a kid, I always assumed this was a mortar and when playing, Doc used to use it to lay cover fire while he was waiting for support to evac his wounded. You also get a projectile that loads into the launch tube and… yeah, this looks like some kind of rocket-propelled weapon as opposed to a flare, so I don’t know. The launcher has a shoulder strap, but no bipod to support it, and because of limitations in those rotating knee hinges, Doc can’t really get down on the ground well enough to use it convincingly. I’m not a huge critic of the more limited range of articulation on these figures, but here’s a case where it’s definitely not ideal.

A lot more practical is the flare pistol he keeps holstered on his right hip. It’s a decent, albeit simple sculpt and the frame is painted silver and the grips are left as gray plastic. The holster design, however, does tend to drop the pistol out of the back.

Doc’s filecard listed him as a pacifist, but I don’t remember them playing that up with him in the cartoon, not like they did with Lifeline, who was a constant whiney bitch about it. Thankfully, S7 included the standard Sunbow rifle with him. And hey, if you want your Doc to be a pacifist, just give it to someone else! Personally, I can never have enough of these rifles!

For the last piece of equipment, there’s a walkie, which looks to be a recolor of the one included with Flint. Oddly enough it’s lavender! I’m not sure if that’s a cartoon reference or just a color they decided to go with for some variety.

And the last accessory is a comic book, which references the episode Countdown to Zartan, where Doc was relaxing on the base and reading a comic. I thought that was a nice little character moment for him.

There are a few minor inaccuracies here, but I still think Doc turned out great, and I’m thrilled to finally have this one in my toon-style collection. While he got short-changed as the cartoon went on, Doc had some great moments in the first two miniseries, not to mention There’s No Place Like Springfield, and to be honest, those are all my favorite episodes from the entire cartoon series. Not to mention, he was also portrayed as quite the scientist beyond just medicine. He was the one that came up with the energy absorbing mirrors in Revenge of Cobra, which lead to my favorite Doc line, “Don’t worry, I’m wearing my asbestos underwear.” While there’s some question now over what the future is going to look like for this line, I’m damn glad Doc made it out when he did. And that brings me to Wave 4 and three more figures to get me all caught up… But Wave 5’s shipping is imminent, so I’ll try to hurry!