G.I. Joe Special Missions #7 (October 1987) – “The Old Switcheroo” – Larry Hama/Herb Trimpe
This one starts with some terrorists (or freedom fighters if you prefer) from Sierra Gordo busting into the Cobra Embassy Building in New York. Using a combination of guile and firepower, the counter-revolutionaries manage to barricade themselves in the boiler room and disable the security cameras there. Baroness leads a strike force to assault the boiler room, but before she can start the invaders use the security circuit to air their demands. Apparently these particular radicals are in favour of the revolution but not Cobra’s support of it … or something. Like most radicals, it’s hard to figure out
exactly what they stand for. Anyway, they threaten to blow up the building unless Cobra withdraws support for the revolution in Sierra Gordo. Zarana doesn’t think these punks have the guts to blow themselves up but Baroness isn’t so sure, so she calls Serpentor on Cobra Island. He tells her to handle the problem or lose command of the New York operation. We see some Joes (Chuckles, Dial Tone, Lady Jaye, and Psyche-Out) on a roof across the street, observing everything that’s happening. They seem to have their own agenda and decide to go ahead with it. Baroness sends a Viper team to attack the boiler room, but they get wasted. The terrorists blow up a truck bomb in the lobby to show 
that they’re serious, but Zarana still doesn’t think they have the balls to kill themselves for a cause. Baroness does and evacuates the building of almost all personnel, including guards. That gives the Joes their chance and they start by having Breaker and Tunnel Rat (who are in the sewers under the building) cut power to the Embassy. The Joes hang-glide across to the roof, where Dial Tone patches into the security network and Lady Jaye disguises herself as Baroness. In the meantime, both Cobra and the radicals assume the other cut the power and it causes internal strife on both sides. Baroness and Zarana are arguing over what to do, while two of the radicals are fighting over whether they should actually trigger the explosives. Pretending to be Baroness, Lady Jaye transmits a message to the terrorists daring them to blow up the building, so one of them does. But the “explosives” turn out to be riot gas, which causes the radicals and the
remaining Cobras to exit the building quickly. Turns out Chuckles supplied the terrorists with the fake explosives because the Joes wanted to plant a bug in Cobra’s communications net and needed to empty the building to do it. This is a pretty good story, with the Joes using guile instead of force to carry out their plans (although I’m not sure how legal any of it was). The rivalry between Baroness and Zarana will continue, getting even more heated. This actually takes place before issue 64, where Baroness returns to Cobra Island after having lost command of the Embassy to Zarana because of what happened here. That explains why she’s ready to team up with the fake Cobra Commander, since she’s probably not too happy with Serpentor.
G.I. Joe #65 (November 1987) – “Shuttle Complex” – Larry Hama/Ron Wagner/Randy Emberlin
This one starts with a USAF team in space performing an upgrade to American spy satellites. They discover something strange and it turns out to be Cobra (who have their own spy satellites) using the Terror Dromes for something besides just terrorist bases. Dr. Mindbender warns Baroness and the fake Cobra Commander (who I will henceforth refer to as Fred Commander, for clarity) that their secret operation is in danger of being found out. Naturally, Fred Commander has no clue what’s going on, but has to play along and implement the plan Cobra already has in place. And since Baroness told everyone Fred is the real Cobra Commander, she’s
forced to go along with it too. She and Fred Commander are put into a shuttle and launched into space to take out the Air Force shuttle before they can upgrade any more satellites. They start by grabbing the spy satellite with a claw, trapping an Air Force astronaut in the process. In Utah, the Joes have been informed of the spy satellite data, but need to wait for the rest of the satellites to be upgraded before they can figure out exactly what’s going on. They get info on the Cobra shuttle launch and decide they’d better do something about it. They launch their own shuttle (the Defiant), commanded by Payload and a team of Joes (Hawk, Sci-Fi, Dial Tone, and 
Roadblock). The two shuttles engage in orbital combat and the joes manage to disable the claw (and free the astronaut) as well as hitting the Cobra shuttle. Baroness is knocked out, so Fred Commander has to take over, even though he’s not sure what the hell he’s doing. He rises to the occasion and destroys all the spy satellites before Cobra heads back to Earth, leaving the Joes with a damaged shuttle and a lot of questions. We get an epilogue showing that Snake Eyes, Scarlett, and the Blind Master have joined a circus troupe in Austria … a troupe that’s scheduled to play some shows in Borovia very soon. This is a weird issue, with all the space stuff; it almost seems more like Star Trek than G.I. Joe. But I guess the military does have spy satellites, so it makes sense for the Joes to have a space contingent. Payload and
Backstop don’t have much personality here and I don’t think we’ll see much of them going forward, but I guess that always happens when you have such a large number of characters. It was interesting to see Fred actually take command and carry out the mission, making him seem more like the genuine Cobra Commander than an impostor. I’m wondering where this whole storyline is going; he can’t keep up the charade forever, and there are people besides Baroness who know what Cobra Commander really looks like.