Mark A. Nelson - G.I. Joe Special #1 page 14

First of all, Todd McFarlane didn't touch this page or any other inked pages from the G.I. Joe Special #1. These are Mark A. Nelson inks over printed bluelines. I bought this page for the interesting history and backstory of G.I. Joe Special #1.

Back in 1987, a young Todd McFarlane penciled G.I. Joe #60. The rumor was that Larry Hama or an editor didn't like Todd's work in issue #60, so they took Todd off the book for #61 and asked for a rush job from Marshall Rogers and Danny Bulanadi. But by the time anybody told Todd, he already finished penciling the entire #61. Marvel received a fully drawn #61 issue from both Marshall Rogers and Todd McFarlane but only published the Marshall Rogers version.

Fast Forward to 1995, Todd already established himself as a superstar in the industry. He already sold 2.5 million copies of Spider-man #1 and 1.7 million copies of Spawn #1. Marvel cancelled G.I.Joe at #155. Marvel still had an entire G.I. Joe issue penciled by Todd that they never published. Two months after they cancelled G.I. Joe, Marvel tries to cash in on those unpublished #61 pencils, re-title the book as G.I. Joe Special #1, and have Phil Gosier draw Snake Eyes as a homage to Todd's Spider-man #1. The dialogue and word balloons are verbatim between #61 and Special #1. It's interesting to see how differently Marshall the veteran and a young Todd approached the same script.

As I said earlier, Mark A. Nelson inked the pages over printed bluelines. I have no idea what happened to the McFarlane pencils on paper. Maybe Todd or Marvel threw them away. This is a bit interesting because this is 1995. We're still in the fax machine and dial-up modem era. Blueline inks didn't become prevalent until at least 10 years later. I have never seen blueline inks from the 90s. Mark would have needed an industrial printer to print blue ink on large Marvel stock paper. If you bought original art from this book before 2005, you likely wouldn't know that McFarlane's pencils could be printed on the paper with Nelson inking on top.

To see a page-by-page comparison between Marshall Roger's #61 and Todd McFarlane's G.I. Joe Special, there is a very informational youtube video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7_1rf6ttoQ