G.I. Joe #152 (September 1994) – “Just Fade Away” – Larry Hama/Phil Gosier/Scott Koblish
This one starts with Joe Colson (the original G.I. Joe) being flown by Ace to Washington for some kind of high-level meeting. During the flight, Joe reflects on his last time in a supersonic jet and we get an extensive flashback to Vietnam, when Joe was still a First Lieutenant with Special Forces. Their hamlet was overrun and most of the team was dead, so Joe told the last couple of guys to take off while he stayed behind to blow the ammo bunker. He ran into some VC inside and after taking care of them he blew up the
bunker and headed for the LZ. But the extraction chopper was shot down and he and his only two men left (Angel and Top) were about to be overrun when a black chopper showed up to rescue them. The pilot let them know he was there to take Colton to Tan Son Nhut where he was scheduled to fly straight to Washington and Top quickly realized the chopper must belong to the CIA. The pilot wouldn’t deviate from his course no matter what, so Angel died on the way and Colton took him to Graves Registration personally, making the next pilot wait. When he got to Washington, he met President Kennedy personally and learned about the new G.I. Joe program, which Kennedy 
wanted him to be part of. He told Colton to think about it and get back to him, but this was in November of 1963, so Kennedy didn’t have much longer to live. We get back to the present when Ace and Joe land in Washington and Joe takes a minute to reflect on all the loss he’s seen over the years. This was a pretty good issue, although to be perfectly honest I don’t really care all that much about the 1960s version of G.I. Joe. Seeing Joe meet Kennedy was interesting, as was the rose-coloured idealism of Camelot, especially considering all the crazy shit that was about to happen in the Sixties.
G.I. Joe #153 (October 1994) – “Shadow of the BAT” – Eric Fein, Peter Quinones/William Rosado/Jack Snider
This one starts with a scientist named Knox putting the finishing touches on a new BAT (Battle Android Trooper) for Cobra. She’s built a BAT superior to Mindbender’s old units and has programmed it with Scarlett’s brainwave patterns so it can home right in on her and kill her. Knox is apparently an independent contractor who’s hoping to make a deal with Cobra, so killing Scarlett is her way of demonstrating how good her BATs will be. Scarlett is in Salt Lake City and Knox and a Cobra pilot get there quickly and deploy the BAT, which tracks her by her brainwaves and starts
trying to waste her. Of course, Scarlett doesn’t die easily and manages to evade the android’s attacks, but she does lose her weapons and radio during the fight. Scarlett leads the BAT to a construction site and arms herself with a pick, leading the robot up towards the top of the unfinished building. She jams the pick into the android and knocks it into a tub of cement. When Knox’s chopper flies lower to re-establish the signal, Scarlett fires a rivet gun at them. But the BAT isn’t done with her yet and rises from the cement to wound her in the leg. She does some more damage by dumping girders on the BAT, which screws up its sensors so bad that it switches to visual recognition. Unfortunately, 
the foreman’s wife looks a lot like Scarlett and the robot tries to kill her instead. Scarlett smashes it with a dump truck and crushes the android to scrap, while Knox retreats when the other Joes arrive. This was an okay story; it was good to see Scarlett in some solo action, although she seemed a bit too jokey to me, sounding more like Spider-Man than her usual self. Knox was interesting, a scientist who looks a bit like Sharon Stone or Kim Basinger, but is motivated only by profit. I’m not sure if we’ll see her again or not. The coincidence of the foreman’s wife looking like Scarlett (and being a snotty asshole) was established early on, but still seems like a bit of a stretch.