On sale this week from the newly redressed Oni Press is The Secret History of D.B. Cooper #1. Written and drawn by Brian Churilla, the series posits that everything we know about the famous folk hero/criminal -- who in 1971 ransomed a hijacked plane for $250,000 before parachuting into the wilderness of the American Northwest, never to be seen again -- is all an elaborate C.I.A. cover-up. As put forth in this funny yet also quite serious new comic, the truth is that Cooper was a highly valued government assassin possessed of metaphysical abilities that granted him access to a dark realm of consciousness shared by all mankind. But when Cooper went rogue, the famous airline hijacking was a clever plan to ensure that everybody in the United States would help the government track down their missing agent and his non-existent bag of money.

It's pretty wild stuff. You can read seven pages below, as well as see the full variant cover by J.H. Williams III.


From an Oni press release:

It's our contention that the FBI's recent inclusion of amateur sleuths in the forty-year search for infamous hijacker D.B. Cooper is part of an elaborate ruse being perpetrated on the public.
Furthermore, this is likely part of an attempt by the government to discredit the forthcoming Oni Press series, THE SECRET HISTORY OF D.B. COOPER, which finally reveals the truth regarding the case. In our continuing effort to subvert the government's unending campaign of misinformation, we have decided to release a preview of the first issue.

From creator Brian Churilla, the book chronicles the life of the mythic folk hero, revealing that "The DB Cooper Incident" was not a hijacking and extortion plot as widely reported. In fact, this cover story is quite pedestrian, as what really happened nearly changed the course of human history.


A genre mashup in the vein of Oni's critically acclaimed The Sixth Gun, The Secret History of D.B. Cooper already has a fan in Warren Ellis, who said, "If you love Mignola's Hellboy, you'll find a lot to like in Churilla's comically grim, energetically cartooned tale of an oneiric sniper scowling his way through Lovecraftian mindscapes."

The Secret History of D.B. Cooper #1 goes on sale this week at finer comics shops and digitally via comiXology.