Is there a way to compare “x3C!–” with “<!–" and get 'true' in JavaScript?

In one of my projects I have to parse HTML pages and to check if each parsed “tag candidate” is in the predefined list of tag defining strings.

The problem emerges when for some reason the parser return "x3C!--" as the “tag candidate”, so I get false when comparing it with "<!--" from the list.

Is there any way to get true comparing those strings?