Robert Atkins provided the artwork of the character that fans saw on Hasbro's Pulse.
Fiction[]
Paithoon Kwaigno was born in Hua Hin, Thailand and enlisted in her country's military at an early age. She received Special Forces training and participated in covert actions in Laos. It was during one such mission that her team was killed, and she was taken into captivity. Stiletto's abductors tortured her, permanently leaving her disfigured and robbing her of the use of her left eye. Before her captors could end her life, however, they found themselves surrounded by Cobra soldiers being led by Cobra Commander. Cobra Commander freed Stiletto, but rather than have his troops kill Stiletto's tormentors, he allowed her to battle the man who had scarred her. She ended his life before collapsing, and when she awoke days later in a Cobra medical facility, she pledged her service to Cobra Commander.
As one of Cobra Commander's most loyal and trusted agents, she has been called upon to perform assignments both martial and personal in nature. She was responsible for training Whisper at Cobra's hidden facility at Alejandro Selkirk Island, Chile when Cobra Commander contacted her and tasked her with assassinating a group of pirates operating out of Flores, Indonesia and recovering a weapons cache that they had stolen. Upon the completion of that mission, she was ordered to secretly make her way to Gotland, Sweden and research the whereabouts of William Kessler.
Stiletto was next seen in Casamance, Sengal fighting alongside Mercer, a former Cobra Viper who wished to defect to the G.I. Joe team. Along with Taurus and Red Dog, she assisted the G.I. Joe team in fighting off Cobra agents who had been sent to kill the Cobra deserter and accompanied them to the Pit, the G.I. Joe team's base located beneath the Chaplain’s Assistant motor pool at Fort Wadsworth. When the team relocated to a hidden base in the western United States, she was transferred to this facility, although its location was kept from all but a few members of the G.I. Joe staff.
Stiletto's Cobra affiliation was revealed during a mission in Kersab, Trucial Abysmia, where she abandoned the team and presumably betrayed their location to the Plague. What was not made manifest at the time was that she had been acting on behalf of Cobra Commander, who had vanished following an attempt on his life in Gotland and had taken on the guise of Mercer to infiltrate the G.I. Joe team and lay the groundwork for his return to Cobra. Stiletto worked behind the scenes to make sure that Cobra Commander was provided with the equipment he needed to escape The U.S.S. Nimitz and retake his place at the head of Cobra.
Following Cobra's acquisition of what would become Cobra Island, Stiletto traveled to San Francisco and took custody of William (Billy) Kessler, Cobra Commander's son. After smuggling him out of the country, she took on the responsibility of training him to one day replace Cobra Commander. However, he was rescued from captivity by Serenity. Stiletto tracked the duo down before they could escape from Cobra Island and engaged Serenity in combat. During the fight, Stiletto broke Billy's leg and would have killed Serenity if not for the intervention of Wraith, who assisted the badly wounded Serenity in escaping Cobra Island but allowed the G.I. Joe team to take custody of Billy.
Stiletto has received extensive military training and is familiar with most NATO and Warsaw Pact small arms. She is proficient in infiltration and demolitions and highly skilled in the use of bladed weapons. Stiletto has worked hard to compensate for the loss of her left eye and for a time worked with Storm Shadow to develop a fighting style that would capitalize upon an enemy's attempts to exploit her blind spot.
She is very ambitious and has made no secret that she covets the Baroness's position within the Cobra hierarchy, but thus far, Cobra Commander seems content employing her as his personal agent rather than give her a position within the Cobra High Command.
Behind the Scenes[]
This is the first known instance of a cosplayer depicting Stiletto (JoeCon 2016).
Stiletto first appeared in Bill Nedrow's G.I. Joe: Body Count. She was one of four characters selected to be a part of Hasbro's first Kindle Worlds Fan Poll (alongside Jim Beard's Marcus, Troy Osgood's Blackjack, and Justin Bell's Whisper). Initial art of the character was drawn by artist Josh Schultz, and art by Robert Atkins was shown at New York Comic Con on October 9, 2015, when the contest was formally announced.
She was revealed to have won in an article on Hasbro's Pulse on November 20, 2015, and the same website provided an update on the character's development on May 24, 2016. The figure was first shown off at JoeCon in Colorado on June 18, 2016.
In addition to Body Count, she has appeared in G.I. Joe: Dishonor Thy Father and G.I. Joe Legacy: Stiletto. G.I. Joe Legacy was a four-part series written in round-robin fashion by the four authors whose characters were included in the Kindle Worlds Fan Poll.
Toys[]
Stiletto was released as an action figure alongside Heavy Duty in November of 2016.