"Inventor of Anything" and "The Cat Box"

 I think it makes sense to talk about these two stories--Barks' second and third Gyro four-pagers--in tandem.  Actually, it might've made sense to include the first one as well, but that ship has sailed.  

Actually, I don't think "Inventor of Anything" is really all that interesting.  Fight me.  I mean, it's pleasant enough; how could it not be?  But I'm not sure that at this point Barks had much of a vision for how these were going to go.  I do like crik niggles and upp snuffles, however.  Is there some cipher there that I'm missing?  I feel like there ought to be.

Yeah, okay, there IS "Speedy."  How much is there to say about Speedy that's different than what one would say about Mortie and Ferdie in "Trapped Lighting?"  I wonder.

So here he is: a weird little homunculus.  He does provide an object lesson in the different proportions of ducks and humans, and how they're not interchangeable.  And also: Gyro's neighbor, who is pure unfathomable, Iago-like malice.

BUT: I've been sharing the URL for this site fairly promiscuously lately, so there might be a few new readers who aren't really down with the whole story here.  So let's sum up what we know: the Gyro four-pagers ran in the back of the Uncle $crooge comic book.  They were introduced because of a quirk in USPS shipping prices, under which magazines were cheaper to ship than books, and to be categorized as the former rather than the latter, they had to feature stories with at least two wholly disparate casts (did superhero comics ever do something like Western did?  It's an interesting question).  Barks had used Gyro in a number of previous stories, but this is where the character really came into his own.  At first, Barks didn't quite understand the "wholly disparate casts" thing, and tried to feature HDL and Donald respectively in his first and second stories, but then when he learned he couldn't, replaced them with other characters--Mickey's nephews Mortie and Ferdie in the one, and this random "Speedy" dude in the other.

So Barks couldn't use his main characters in these Gyro shorts.  But could he have used secondary characters who rarely if ever appeared in his U$ adventures?  Gladstone, Daisy, Grandma, Gus, April May and June?  Probably; Grandma was permitted to remain in "Trapped Lightning."  But he didn't, presumably out of a preference for safety over sorrow.

What I feel like we haven't adequately noted is that this whole thing is really dumb.  Because notwithstanding the word "book" in the name, a comic book is obviously, for all intents and purposes, a magazine.  It has the same format, it's distributed and sold in the same way, and it's found in the magazine section of a store.  The fact that this was apparently an argument is incredibly bizarre to me.  I'm picturing postal officials combing through comics to determine the character content of the stories.  It's silly.  And under this system, is an anthology of unrelated short stories now a magazine, or what?  SO WEIRD.

At any rate, this kind of a fun invention, if much less baroque than what Gyro would get up to later.

And I do like imagining Donald beating the hell out of Bad Neighbor (any relation to Jones?).

BIFF BAM SOCK OW CLONK.  That is a pretty fun collection of sound effects, I must say, though I can't decide whether it would've been MORE fun to actually see the fight.  But will "that man" (should Gyro know his name, maybe?) really still be running in ten minutes?  Where's he trying to get to, exactly? 

Oh, is THAT what it goes to show?  All right.  It would be pointless to complain about the dubious physics here, so...I shan't.  Whoa!  How's THAT for a twist?

Anyway, let's return to postal regulations for a moment--the kids love 'em!  But the thing to be noted is that, as nonsensical as they may have been, they were, at least in this case, actually extremely good.  No doubt the Gyro shorts would've turned out fun in any case.  Why wouldn't they have?  Barks is Barks.  But the fact that he was working under this oulipo-like constraint gives them a singular tone that we don't really see elsewhere in his work.  I've struggled to articulate the distinction, but you know I'm right.  Admit it!  This informs Gyro's entire character, and it's just...cool and unique.

And that is not to even SPEAK of the other, related Barksian innovation that would not exist if not for these weird rules.  I refer, of course, to Helper here, who was introduced right here in the third Gyro short.  Clearly, Barks realized that if he was going to write stories with JUST Gyro, it would be needful to have some other regular character, so he's not totally isolated.  But (this is just me extrapolating, but it certainly seems plausible) the problem is that these are very short stories, and a whole new regular duck (or dogface) character could make them overcrowded.  The solution?  This little guy, who never talks and who doesn't have to play a big role in the story (though he does a few times), but nonetheless is there and makes Gyro seem a bit less alone.  How smart is that?

Of course, in later stories, Helper starts (brilliantly) having whole parallel stories; that's not the case here, where he doesn't really do much.  But Barks got there soon enough!

Anyway, as for the plot of the story: is it really worth thinking about?  Not too much.  "Hot ice for hot iced tea" is fun, though.  Also, shouldn't you need to, like, input some linguistic data if you're going to invent a translator?  In fairness, that was never an issue in Star Trek either.

Okay, we DO have to give out some plaudits for the hep cat patter, which is very superior.  Nobody else could've done this!  Well...Bob Gregory on a good day might've come close.  But Barks' supremacy is indisputable.  

A real song!  I don't if there was a particular popular version of it at the time that Barks would've known.  Also, I'm not sure why it needs to be translated to be an effective deterrent.  Still, I like the image of him singing, and I like that he's shorted out his Helper.  That guy has to put up with some weird stuff.

So "Inventor of Everything" and "The Cat Box."  There you have them!