G.I. Joe Vol 2 #36 DDP Staff Edition

Devil's Due, Published date: June 2008.

This is a special Devil's Due Publishing (DDP) staff edition (hence not distributed to the public) of their last issue of G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero (overall issue number #235, which was a combination of Marvel's 155 issues and DDP's 80). The issue was part 12 of 12, "Hell", written by Mark Powers.

The end is near. Cobra Commander has almost won, but the Joes make a final stand...

WORLD WAR III: Part 12 of 12 - Author: Mark Powers Artists: Mike Bear, Mike Shoyket, Pat Quinn & Jean-Francois Beaulieu This is it! It's all been leading to this issue! The war finally brings the G.I. Joe team and Cobra face-to-face! Every feud, every drop of bad blood, all the history between these two groups finally meet on the battlefield for THE knock-down, drag-out fight of G. I. Joe comics! Twenty-five years of payoff happens here! Cover price $5.50.

The standard edition (below) had a cover by Michael Golden and the limited variant cover (possibly a 1:25 and shown to the right) had a cover by Herb Trimpe.

The DDP staff edition was the brainchild of editor Mike O'Sullivan and assistant published Sam Wells (who not only worked on G.I. Joe but were also big fans) who both wanted to do something special for the last DDP issue creating a limited in-house created cover variant for staff.

O'Sullivan designed the overall cover layout; writer Mark Powers drew the Colton figure and O'Sullivan inked it. O'Sullivan also drew the headshots, which were inked by Rob Atkins. O'Sullivan also stated that "Mike Bear drew the corner box homage to the Marvel Comics G.I. Joe series (but with DDP President Josh Blaylock taking the place of a Grunt), and I inked it. America's Elite colorist Wes Dzioba colored the images, then I combined the separate images into the final cover composition, continuing the homage to the early cover design of Marvel's G.I. Joe run".

According to O'Sullivan, fifty copies of the DDP staff edition were printed and around fifteen copies mailed out to the creative team behind #36 and a few also mailed to Hasbro who "had been instrumental in helping us during our time with Joe". Joe went on to say: "As far as we can recall about 15-20 copies were given out". The intention was then to give out the rest to friends and family of DDP staff but, before an event was arranged, the box with the remaining copies was unfortunately destroyed in a flood.

Above is the start of the editorial marking the end of the title.

In early February 2021, CGC recorded seven gradings of the "Devil's Due Edition" in their census, with two in the highest grade of 9.8 (near mint / mint).

The Devil's Due Edition is incredibly hard to find and there were no recent sales at the time of writing.