Gyro Gearloose | |
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First appearance | "Gladstone's Terrible Secret" in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #140, May 1952 |
Created by | Carl Barks |
Voiced by |
Gyro Gearloose is a fictional character, an anthropomorphic chicken, created by Carl Barks for The Walt Disney Company. He is part of the Donald Duck universe, appearing in comic book stories as a friend of Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck and anyone who is associated with them. He was also a frequent star of the animated DuckTales. He first appeared in the Carl Barks comic Gladstone's Terrible Secret (Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #140).
Gyro is Duckburg's most famous inventor, even though his inventions don't always work the way he wants them to. His outrageous productivity is presented as a factor in the quality of his inventions; because he always comes up with new ideas, the fact that his inventions often lack an important feature, will often cause trouble for Scrooge or Donald who have bought the invention. He is known as being good-natured towards others. Gyro is often assisted by his Little Helper (or just "Helper"), who is a small anthropomorphic robot with a light bulb for a head. Besides Little Helper, he has also a "thinking cap", a hat shaped like a combination of a roof-top and a nest, with three black birds living in it. Wearing this thinking cap helps Gyro figure out particularly difficult problems, but it only works if the birds are currently nesting in the cap. Some stories have involved the birds leaving Gyro's thinking cap, resulting in the cap becoming ineffective.
Some of Gyro's relatives include his father Fulton Gearloose, his grandfather Ratchet Gearloose, and Newton Gearloose, his nephew. Occasionally there have been stories about Gyro's girlfriend Matilda. In some stories, Gyro's primary rival is Emil Eagle, although he is also antagonized by the Beagle Boys and Magica De Spell. With his inventions, he is also a very important ally of Donald Duck's alter ego, Paperinik, in the Italian Disney comics. Consistent with the two "G's" in his name, he had bins on his shelves containing odds and ends, which he labeled "Gewgaws", "Gimcracks", "Gadgets" and "Gizmos".