In this final issue the true history of the mysterious man who jumped from an aircraft is brought to light and it isn’t what we have been lead to believe. The Secret History of D.B. Cooper #5 gets the Major Spoilers treatment right ahead!
The Secret History of D.B. Cooper #5
Writer: Brian Churilla
Artist: Brian Churilla
Letterer: Ed Brisson
Designer: Keith Wood
Editor: James Lucas Jones
Publisher: Oni Press
Cover Price: $3.99
Previously in Secret History of D.B. Cooper: Monsters from the Glut have begun to use Cooper’s body as a gateway from their reality to enter into ours. After successfully hacking his way out of the gelatinous monster and avoiding the C.I.A., Cooper made haste to the airport, was confronted by Agent Saunders, and in a stunning turn of events D.B. confessed to be the double-agent within the C.I.A.
WAIT, WHAT?
As has been the norm in the series thus far, we start out the issue with parallel story telling from inside the Glut and in reality. D.B. is simultaneously fighting C.I.A. Agent Sauders in the airport restroom and the Soviet agent who has been hunting Cooper for weeks inside the Glut. These sequences worked nicely flowing in and out of each other, especially as the heated blood between Saunders and Cooper comes to a head.
From that part on is when the story became a little bumpy. As Cooper’s hunt for his daughter reaches its apex, twist and turns abound that left me puzzled and confused about how the Glut actually operates. Rounding out the issue and series was a nice tie back into the beginning of issue one and a small heart warming moment. So when it comes down to it, the beginning and end worked better for me than the hooks coming in the middle.
WAIT…WHAT?
Brian Churilla’s art has been a thing of beauty so far in this mini-series, so I expected more of the same from this final issue. Sadly, the art completely took me out of the issue on two different occasions. It was so abrupt that I thought D.B. had actually died during both instances. The first, and most jarring, mistake was a small coloring problem in a characters hair color. While it was a tiny issue, it made the character look like Cooper making me take a step back and figure out what actually was happening. The second was a realization that men in the same age range in History of D.B. Cooper have generally the same facial structure, notably the chin and nose, which made me confuse a random citizens death for D.B.’s. One was fairly small, the other maybe not as much, but those two pieces of art took me out of the story and hurt the issue overall.
BOTTOM LINE: I DIDN’T WANT TO WRITE THIS
I have been on board with the series and singing praises through a couple reviews, Twitter, and even bought a piece of art from Churilla himself, so I simply assumed this would be a topnotch series wrap-up issue. Yet, when I made it through my first read I was left underwhelmed, so I read it again and come up with much of the same feelings. The four issues leading up had been spot on for me, but with a few hiccups in the art and some qualms about the story, this issue didn’t leave me completely satisfied. In the end, I have more questions about the story than I had gong in (and not questions like the end of Inception questions), and can only give Secret History of D.B. Cooper #5 a middle of the road score of 2.5 out of 5 stars.
