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On the cover of one issue of the Belgium-produced comic — sold in Europe and French Canada shortly before Cooper’s hijacking of a Portland-to-Seattle flight — the Canadian superhero is shown parachuting from an aircraft. And that’s what the man calling himself Cooper did four decades ago this week — during a rainstorm while flying somewhere above the dense forests of the Pacific Northwest — to escape justice after receiving his ransom payoff from U.S. authorities.

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Now, the Cooper Research Team, headed by three civilian investigators who have had “special access” to FBI evidence files since 2009, is scheduled to discuss its probe of the case at a 40th anniversary D.B. Cooper symposium on Saturday in Portland.

The informally deputized investigators, who were invited to analyze the Cooper mystery by Seattle-based FBI agent Larry Carr, are Tom Kaye, a paleontologist at Seattle’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Illinois-based metallurgical engineer Alan Stone and University of Chicago scientific illustrator Carol Abraczinskas.

Other “intriguing” details from the Dan Cooper comic, Abraczinskas told Postmedia News on Thursday, include an episode involving a ransom delivered in a knapsack — again matching the real-life hijacking from 1971.

“It’s hard to know if all these details are just super-coincidental or if the hijacker may have gotten a blueprint for his ideas from the comic,” she added. “It’s easy to get sucked into the D.B. Cooper case. Did he live? Did he die? Did he get away with the money? Did he lose it? I have had so much fun with this.”