“Gung-Ho needs his beauty sleep, too. He needs about two hundred years!”

I will admit right up front that the nostalgia factor is at play with any GI Joe product on this site, even though I try to approach my reviews as objectively as I can. GI Joe is dumb military action fun, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else, although there are times when it jumps the shark and lands squarely in “so stupid it hurts.”

The 80s cartoon did this on a regular basis. The GI Joe gamebook, The Everglades Swamp Terror, does this in moderation.

The cartoon would regularly feature insipid plotlines such as COBRA growing dinosaurs just because, or COBRA opening a chain of evil fast food restaurants. I blame 80s cartoon producers for this, because they had a certain level of contempt for their audience. And also far too much cocaine.

The Everglades Swamp Terror has a plot that belongs in a pulp novel: two Joes have been kidnapped while helping to test a new secret hovercraft prototype, which has also been stolen. It’s up to you, codename Wiseguy, and a team of Joes to recover this expensive and valuable assault vehicle, preferably in one piece.

Oh yeah, and get your friends back alive, I guess.

This book is candy. It’s light, it’s dumb, it’s probably unhealthy, but it’s tasty to the palate and helps pass the time in a fun way. Your role as Wiseguy is the strategist, essentially the commander of your ragtag squad of Joes which includes Gung-Ho, Lady Jaye, Deep Six, and a few others I mostly forgot about. Actually, there are a TON of Joes in this book who assist you one way or another—enough to hold a soccer tournament.

The GI Joe Find-Your-Fate books have a habit of opening with some good-natured banter among the Joes, which has become one of the highlights for me. Everglades begins with you and your squad being dragged out of bed at 2 AM for an emergency briefing about the synchronized boat-napping and double-Joe-napping, and everyone is peeved about missing their beauty sleep. It’s a fun way to establish that these jarheads all know each other and function as a tight unit.

But the title is slightly misleading, because there are NUMEROUS Terrors in Said Everglades Swamp, not just one. From the sleepy briefing scene, the story splits into two different arcs, depending which strategy Wiseguy chooses:

1) Operation Boomboat.* Rendezvous with a GI Joe battleship and use it to assault COBRA’s base with lots of guns, explosives, and naval moxie.

2) Operation Gator Chow.* Travel by helicopter, without any backup whatever, and airdrop directly into the missing Joes’ last known location, with the intent to be all sneaky-like.

* Not actual mission names.

I picked the second option on my first readthrough, since I felt time was of the essence, and I just happened to make all the right choices to get the path that felt truest to the book’s overall premise: a chopper dogfight over the Florida coast, a shifty local guide who leads us into a trap, followed by a showdown with Major Bludd in an alligator farm and an action-packed escape. Major Bludd is sadly under-utilized here, but it was still a fun ride.

The battleship plan has its fun moments too, though, as the Joes come up with increasingly irrational plans to deal with an underwater COBRA base, and things keep going horribly awry. Whichever strategy you pick, you’re in for a good time.

In the Operation Poison Dart article, I mentioned my appreciation for the GI Joe gamebooks not being afraid to have a body count. Good golly gumbo, was I not disappointed with this one. In a single story arc, about a dozen COBRA scumbags bit the dust, and one major villain even got et gruesomely by an alligator! In another path, no less than two of my own guys were incapacitated by bullet wounds, something the original creators of the 80s cartoon would never dream of. They were too busy cooking up storylines about evil fast food chains and making Cobra Commander act like a whiny seven-year-old. And also cooking their brains with lots of cocaine.

Drugs are bad, kids.

One gimmick of the GI Joe books is that you play a new Joe with a codename that (vaguely) reflects your specialty. In Operation Poison Dart you were an expert in hypnosis and mind control called Headset, and your skills in mental trickery were frequently utilized. As I’ve previously mentioned, this time around we’re called Wiseguy, and our specialty is strategic planning, which isn’t quite as exciting, I have to admit. However, the theme of strategic planning actually permeates the story, with several key moments where smart planning is crucial to success…even when your only options are whatever hare-brained ideas your fellow Joes have to offer.

Actually the funniest thing about the book is the fact that you’re the sanest and smartest idiot in the room whenever your teammates are around. The following is a brief dramatization of an actual sequence from the story:

Wiseguy: “We need to rescue our guys from that underwater base. Suggestions?”

Shipwreck: “Drop charges on the underwater base and blow it up!”

Wiseguy: “That will kill our friends, the ones we’re trying to rescue. We need an actual strategy.”

Deep Six: “What if we plant a bomb on the underwater base and strategically blow up?”

Wiseguy: “That was Shipwreck’s idea.”

Deep Six: “No, his idea was to drop bombs on it. Mine is to swim down there myself and plant a bomb.”

Wiseguy: “You’re all idiots. Fine, go plant your bomb.”

Shipwreck: “Now Deep Six is being followed by sharks.”

Wiseguy: “Great. Suggestions, he asked guardedly?”

Lady Jaye: “Let me go down there and blast the sharks!”

Wiseguy: “THAT WILL ALERT COBRA TO OUR PRESENCE.”

Lady Jaye: “Who wants fish sticks?!”

Gung-Ho: “I want fish sticks!”

Shipwreck: “I want fish sticks!”

Wiseguy: “HOW DID ANY OF YOU GET HIRED?”

I still wish there was more artwork, even though it’s a mixed bag. Two illustrations depicting COBRA campsite assaults are practically identical apart from the time of day, and there are one or two uninspired depictions of the Joes grouped together. But then the shots of the exploding ship and the stalled-out hovercraft are stunning, and the scene where Lady Jaye busts a cap into Jabberjaw is janky in the best possible way. So I guess I can’t complain too much.

In fact, the art for the shark sequence really doesn’t match the scene itself, but it’s still entertaining in its own right. The book describes the shark battle as a pretty intense affair, but the accompanying artwork depicts Lady Jaye expressing mild disgust while casually zapping the fishy vermin.

Minus ten points, though, for not depicting Deep Six in his trademark space-age diving suit. The whole reason we brought him along was so we could see him klomp around like Buzz Liteyear on steroids.

The Everglades Swamp Terror is another winner as far as GI Joe gamebooks goes, which surprises me since I’ve heard that most of them aren’t very good. You’ll probably finish every path in a single afternoon, but if you like the sort of outrageous military nonsense GI Joe typically delivers, you won’t be disappointed. Unless you hate reading books meant for young readers, in which case, what are you doing on this blog anyway?

Time for bed. Uncle Mac out.