"The Terrible Thinking Cap Tussle"

 As long as I'm talking about Lockman, I've gotta mention this conceptually interesting one.  So we're familiar with Disney Studio Program probably?  It was a thing to create extra stories for foreign markets, because apparently Western's furious release rate was not sufficient to satisfy the ravening lust of overseas readers for Disney comics.  Most famously, the Hubbard/Kinney Fethry stories were DSP productions.  I dunno.  I'd like to see a comparison of how many American-made stories other countries were really publishing compared to the US.  Was it THAT many more?  I mean, granted, issues of Topolino were and are 150+ pages, published weekly, so...maybe I answered my own question.  Man, that's NUTS.  As much as I like Disney comics...I feel like that might be too many Disney comics for me.  Not gonna lie.  But it probably would've been the right number when I was small, which is, I suppose, the point.

At any rate!  This was a Studio story, published in 1962, under the title "Brainstorm Battle."  And it WAS published in English, in Australia (twice!), so it definitely had an extant English script that IDW could've used when they reprinted it in 2017.  At least...I assume so?  There's no way those Australian comics are "lost," is there?  Surely not.  Well, either they didn't have a script, or they thought the one they did have wasn't good enough, and so they got Joe Torcivia to write a new one.  Or possibly just heavily revise the existing one.  But either way, the result is something quite unusual.  I remember kinda wanting to write about this when it was published, but then...I didn't.  So fiddle dee dee.

(Yes, I've poked around a bit looking for scans of Australian Disney comics, but no luck so farand I'm not convinced they actually exist.  But hey, if you got 'em, hook me up.  I'll let you choose a story for me to write about.)

See, Joe's a big fan of Lockman and clearly wanted to pay tribute to the man.  His--Lockman's--most easily-identifiable trait is his tendency to include these little bits of minor wordplay--they're not in all his stories, but when they are, they're easy to identify.  So: "flying fashion statement," "anti-social climbers," "right up our alley," "accosted by oafs"--it feels like Lockman might have written a line like this here or there, but here we're just barraged by them.  It creates the feel of a sort of hypothetical Hyper-Lockman who never actually existed.  More Lockman than Lockman.  And to be clear, I think this is a lot of fun.  It's not the world's most amazing story (though it has its moments), but the writing really elevates it and (I'm just gonna say, not having seen the original) unlocks its true potential.

(BUT--okay, I'll admit it--I kind of prefer the original title.  Not that the new one is terrible or anything, but it feels like it's trying just a li'l too hard.  Sometimes less is more.)

Though if you wanted, you could also call it a tribute more generally to sixties cartoons.  Lockman never would've made a pop culture reference like this. 

One other thing I'd like to note: I don't know about you all, but for me, this drives home the fact that presentation can REALLY influence my perception of a story.  To no one's surprise this is Strobl art, but would I be able to tell that if I didn't know, given the contemporary coloring and better print quality?  The jury is out.  I probably would more easily in a story with the main duck characters, as he had highly distinctive ways of drawing them, but here, I don't know.

"McDuck Buck Truck," that's a classic Lockman-style thing (though I doubt the original specified that this ordnance is merely "stun rounds").  Gyro sitting in the back of a garbage truck like that is a weird non-sequitur, and that dialogue box DOES seem like something someone would write if they were just trying to improvise, having no idea what was meant to go there (and it IS pretty funny).  Then again, what that makes sense would?

A weird kind of hat.  I'm actually not sure why I cut these panels, but here they are.  I suppose just to introduce the concept of these birds.

Jeez, man.  The idea that Gyro gets all his ideas from a novelty bird hat--yes, I know there were old Barks stories with him bonking himself on the head to come up with stuff, but when he did that, the ideas were clearly already in his head and just needed a way out.  There was no suggestion that OTHER people could come up with inventions by giving themselves CRT.

I'm really not sure that this plan needed a super-brilliant mastermind.  But never mind that.  Instead, gasp in horror at that mutant nephew-alike newsie there.

Is it really the CITY that's in danger?  I don't think banking is generally thought of as a municipal issue. Anyway, the banks are insured; they'll live.  I'm trying to figure out if "Chief O'Bull" means anything, but I'm coming up blank.  Is his first name Terra?

I don't care what you say, "hmm-ing birds" is great.  I'd love to know what they were called in the original version, but I'm pretty sure it would've been something much lamer.

And don't I love this bit of casual Little-Nemo-esque surrealism?  Don't I?

Jeez, calling their putative extinction "a trick on me."  Not everything's about YOU, Gyro!  I dig that "moved up in the world" business.  When you think about it, "moved up in the world" doesn't really mean anything here in a practical sense (I mean yes, they're in higher-up nests, I guess, but come on).  But that's why I like it.  If I'm not careful, I'm going to accidentally awaken Pretentious GeoX and start comparing this script to hermetic poetry, intentionally rejecting explicit meaning in favor of language as an end unto itself.  Some people run to conceits or wisdom, but I hold to the hard, brown, nutlike word.

And credit to Strobl, because delighted-Gyro-with-birds-on-his-head is definitely one for the ages.  But why are we so concerned here?  What's going on?

Well, we have THIS fanciful image from a utopian society where billionaires are ground underfoot.  It's humorously nonsensical, but I REALLY would appreciate it if Gryo wouldn't mess with this new, awesome status quo.  But alas...

Another great image: Gyro and a Beagle furiously thinking at each other.  What exactly are they meant to be thinking about, exactly?  Only murder, one presumes.

I would take exception to the idea that Gyro's default state is having the same intelligence as a Beagle Boy and it's only with his birds that he's anything special, but...well, I do.  I do take exception to that.  But at least it WAS established earlier in the story, so there's that.

Seems like the go-to move here would be to behead you then, no?  Granted, then you'd have a flippin' severed head you couldn't get rid of, but...well, here's hoping they don't!

I mean, this story is not a deathless work of art or anything, regardless of who wrote it, but I feel pretty confident that this version is a lot more readable than the original.  And it's getting me thinking that it would be fun to do with other old Western stories.  Not Barks, that would feel like a desecration, and probably not for a lot of others as well.  But I do think that in the vast, trackless wasteland of seventies Disney stories, you could probably find something you could really improve.  Maybe I'll try something like that one of these...time periods.  Though it could pretty easily get insufferable.

And I feel like I've been obsessing about Lockman (who was a Bircher--have I mentioned that?) too much lately, so probably something different next time.