I Am NOT D.B. Cooper

It has come to my attention this evening that certain nefarious elements in the Olympia community are attempting to spread the heinous rumor that the famous Thanksgiving Eve 1971 airplane hijacker known as D.B. Cooper still lives and breathes in the person of-- me!?! Why, I cannot say. Hoaxers are such perplexing creatures.

Well, let's nip this one right in the bud.

Above is a portrait of D.B. I drew for the Missing Persons playing card series in 1996.

Below is a photo of me taken around the time Cooper performed his crime. As you can see we look nothing alike. He's balding, I had plenty of hair. His hair was dark, mine blonde. He appeared to be in his mid-forties in 1971, I obviously am not.

Also, Cooper was described as being taller than me. He smoked cigarettes, drank highballs, and used the term "snarf." Not to mention hijacked a jet. I didn't do any of those things in 1971 and with the exception of a brief and stupid flirtation with cigarettes in the later 1970s, never did any of those things later in life either. In addition I have never gone skydiving, although one day I'd like to try.

And, not a small detail: hijacking a plane and terrorizing the airline employees is just plain wrong, in addition to being a major crime.

I always thought his crime resonated with so many people because it was about money, not a political cause. And money is very universal. But as Morty the Dog readers know, money is not really the thing that motivates me.

Yes, it is true I lived very near under both of his flight paths. But that is about as close a connection as I have with Cooper. Well, that, and the fact I was living on Cooper Road at the time of the hijacking.

We may never learn the true identity of D.B. Cooper. But, to use a phrase in use at the time of the hijacking, you can bet your sweet bippy it ain't me.

Also below, "The Amazing Legend of D.B. Cooper," originally published in Limbolympia (1983)

Limbolympia

1st edition, January 1983, Olympia, Washington, 50 copies, ivory cover, enlarged digest size.

2nd edition, March 1983, Olympia, Washington, 56 copies, goldenrod cover, enlarged digest size.

Print-on-demand reprint series, 1994, McCleary, Washington, regular digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint edition, July 2005, 5 copies, yellow cover, regular digest size.

So named because I was back in Oly 1982-1983 and not feeling all that great about being trapped in that city, yet again. I was holding down a temporary job in my field after having just gotten married and wanted something permanent. Hence in Limbo in Olympia.

Trivia:

I think the Darwin Corksniffer story might've been born in a writing class with instructor Peter Elbow during my senior year at The Evergreen State College 1978-1979. I revived the idea and made it into a comic.

"The 13 O'clock Movie" story has the feel of purging a bunch of stuff.

Apparently Joe Stalin knew a lot more English than he let on. I once made a constructive suggestion involving Stalin's stuffed corpse to the Russians via my comic The Tall Elf.

The D.B. Cooper story is true. The case remains unsolved although several strong candidates (all of them now dead) have emerged in the last decade.

There have been a lot of reprints over the years of some parts of this book, but Found Loose in the Mail was made into a minicomic of it's own by Hal Hargit in 1987.

Found Loose in the Mail

Wash up! We're gonna worship the warship!

There's sort of a sub-genre of minicomix: Artwork previously published in other works and then reassembled and reprinted in the mini format.

Found Loose in the Mail was originally presented as a story in the digest-sized Limbolympia in 1983. The last four pages, Morty Comix #1629, had never seen print before, as with most of the Morty Comix series.

Hal Hargit (Dallas, Texas : Ozone Press) printed 100 of these things Jan. 3, 1987 under the series "Ozone Classic Reprint Series ; No. 1" and a second series "OZP ; no. 13."

An odd size, this comic is only 11 cm. at the spine.

I had the pleasure of meeting Hal around the same year as this comic was released, during a MU Press party in Seattle. Back in those days when we Newavers chiefly communicated through the US Postal Service, it was always great to have an opportunity to connect a real person with the pritned name.