Brainstorm Battle, also known as The Terrible Thinking Cap Tussle, is a comic story written by Vic Lockman, penciled by Tony Strobl and inked by Steve Steere. It features Gyro Gearloose, his Thinking Cap, the New Hmm-ing Birds and the Beagle Boys; Scrooge McDuck is also mentioned.
Description[]
The Beagle Boys, after merely stealing a few of his most recent inventions (such as flying trousers), decide to swipe Gyro Gearloose's Thinking Cap. They then use it to boost their own intelligence and use their new inventions to commit an unparalleled crimewave. Gyro has to build another Thinking Cap to once more be a match for them… but it's not that easy!
Behind the scenes[]
This story was first published in April of 1965 in the Brazilian O Pato Donald #700. The very next year, it was printed in English in the Australian Giant #369, and would then be reprinted in Giant #583. Its only American printing to date was in 2017 in Uncle Scrooge #433.
For this latter printing, the editors felt that Lockman's rudimentary dialogue (which was owed to its originally being a S-Coded Story not meant for English release) should be 'spiced-up' in pastiche of Lockman's usual truculent style, which was achieved by long-standing Lockman enthusiast Joe Torcivia. As part of this partial rewrite, the title was changed to The Terrible Thinking Cap Tussle, which was deemed more suitably over-the-top than the tamer Brainstorm Battle of the original. Torcivia reportedly considered changing the name of Little Thinkle Star to "Alpha-Zen-Tauri" for this printing, only to backtrack after being convinced that "Little Thinkle Star" sounded 'more Lockmanian' if not actually better.