"Trapped Lightning"

 We'll get back to early Barks stories one of these days, maybe, but now, I want to write about some Gyro Gearloose shorts.  Such is my mercurial whim.  You have problem?

So natch, we start at the beginning.  Well, not Gyro's beginning, but the Gyro four-pager's beginning.  I think we all know the story by now, but it was the weird thing where you got different postal rates if your comic books featured stories with completely discrete casts, which is also why issues of Donald Duck featured Goofy four-pagers for a while.  How long did this system last?  That's not clear to me.  The Goofy ones didn't start appearing until a few years after the Gyro, when you'd think it would've been a no-brainer to institute them both at the same time.  Also, how specifically did it work?  If Barks had contrived to write a U$ story not featuring Donald, could he have then been used in the Gyro short instead, even if he was going to feature in the main story next time?  Ah, the mysteries of life!

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