G.I. Joe #118 (November 1991) – “Deceptions and Diversions” – Larry Hama/Rod Whigham/Randy Emberlin
This one continues from last issue, with some mercenaries in Beirut busting into Snake Eyes’s hotel room to claim the reward on his head. He takes them down easily but doesn’t kill them, which makes them wonder if he’s as bloodthirsty as they’ve been told. Apparently Cobra Commander told everyone that some Joes had gone renegade and were now working for Destro, hence the bounty he’d placed on them. A couple weeks later, the freighter carrying Destro and the people who rescued him (Zartan, Billy, and Chuckles) arrives in Beirut, where some terrorists and Night Creeper ninjas are waiting. They scan the ship and find
no heat signatures and since the lifeboats are all missing, they figure Destro and company left the ship not too long ago. They go out to search and find the ship’s crew (who are mostly smugglers) in the lifeboats, but the captain tells them Destro never left the ship. Turns out he and the others hid in the refrigerated food storage locker to mask their heat signatures. But they miscalculated the speed of the ship and it plows right into the pier, forcing them to jump off and run for solid ground. They run into some ninjas they assume are Night Creepers, but it turns out to be Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, and the three new ninjas he recruited last issue (Nunchuk, Tjbang, and Dojo). Destro has someone he needs to see in Beirut, so when the Night Creepers and terrorists attack, the 
Ninja Force holds them off while the others take off with Destro. Meanwhile on the Cobra aircraft carrier, Cobra Commander puts Baroness in the brainwave scanner and starts dismantling her memories. In Beirut, Destro leads Billy, Chuckles, and Storm Shadow to a hideout where he introduces them to Rashid, a computer expert. (This is the same Rashid that met Dusty and Mainframe way back in issue 58, an adventure that sparked Rashid’s interest in computers.) Rashid comes with them when they’re picked up by Wild Bill to go to Zurich. Destro wants to invade Night Creeper headquarters so Rashid can plant a virus in their computers. Since the Night Creepers have infiltrated Cobra’s financial network, Destro can use the virus to bankrupt Cobra Commander, something he tells the Commander with great glee. Cobra Commander has
no choice but to release Baroness and cancel the bounty on Destro, and since he assumes Destro had planted the virus years ago, Destro threatens to expose the Night Creepers’ spying if they don’t let him go. This is a pretty good issue that shows Destro using his wits to beat Cobra Commander. Using subterfuge and going after Cobra Commander’s weakness (money) is brilliant, but I’m wondering if Cobra Commander’s screwing with Baroness’s mind will have repercussions. Maybe she won’t remember falling in love with Destro? But he won her over once, so I guess he could do it again if he had to.
G.I. Joe #119 (December 1991) – “Double Trouble” – Herb Trimpe
This one starts with a plane delivering some crates to an island in the South Atlantic. Cobra Commander is waiting to receive the cargo, but he gets pissed off when he finds one crate missing and shoots the co-pilot. The missing crate is back at a private airstrip in Long Island, where it’s found by the mechanic. It turns out to contain a robot duplicate of the President, so the Joes plant a bug in the crate and seal it up, hoping to follow whoever picks it up. The plan works and they backtrack the crates to the Cobra Consulate Building in New York. Hawk assigns Scarlett, Snake Eyes, and Storm Shadow to infiltrate the building and plant a beacon
so a smart bomb can wipe out the robot manufacturing facility. The three ninjas get inside and find a shitload of robots in the sub-basement, made to imitate various politicians and celebrities (and a few Joes). Storm Shadow tries to plant the beacon and gets jumped by Snake Eyes, who’s obviously a robot duplicate. They fight and the robot is almost as skilled as the real Snake Eyes. Cobra Commander watches on a video monitor as the real Snake Eyes shows up to fight his doppelganger. Storm Shadow can’t tell the difference between them, so he threatens to shoot Scarlett and that lets him know the true Snake Eyes. They knock out the video feed and Scarlett pretends to be her robot double so 
they can get to Cobra Commander. They waste all his robot bodyguards, but the Commander escapes right before Wild Bill sends the smart bomb into the building. Snake Eyes and company get out just before the robot facility is destroyed, while the stealth fighter sent to bomb the storage bunker on the island turns out to be a decoy … a submarine launches a Cruise Missile that wipes out the robots on the island. This issue was a bit goofier than usual, probably because it wasn’t written by Larry Hama. With its robot duplicates and corny jokes, it feels mor like an episode of the cartoon than an issue in the regular series. The continuity is a bit off too, since the Cobra Consulate was
destroyed a while back (unless they rebuilt it really quickly). I did like some of the robot “celebrity cameos”: we see Elvis, Saddam Hussein, Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, Mikhail Gorbachev, Eddie Murphy, a CNN reporter I don’t recognize, Ronald Reagan (with REJECT stamped on his forehead), Don King, Donald Trump, and even Hawk from the Joes.