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Next to Scrooge, my favorite Barks creation has always been Gladstone. One thing that has always most impressed be about Barks is his ability to create "foils" for his main characters like Donald and Scrooge in the way they play off of each others strengths and weakness. I find the juxtaposition of Scrooge: the rich man who earned his wealth through hard work, Donald: the hard working everyman who just can't seem to keep a steady job, and Gladstone: the man who's lucky enough to never have to work a day in his life to be sheer perfection in terms of storytelling purposes. Also, I can think of no better rival for Donald for day to day stuff than Gladstone particulatly when it comes to winning Daisy's affections.

I find Gladstone to be a character of potential complexity on the same level of Scrooge, in how he can be incredibly mean and selfish of his treatment on Donald in some stories, and yet very kind with what he can do with the winning from his luck in others, such as donations to charities and such. In fact, I say that there is a lot of complexity in Gladstone left to be written about. I'm not sure if Gladstone could ever have the potential to have his own book like Scrooge, but I'd love to see more stories starring Gladstone, I think that there is a ton of potential to dig into his past and motivations and to perhaps soften some of his rougher edges in the same way Barks did for Scrooge when he made the transition to lead character. (In fact I had some ideas as to how that could happen that when I was younger I thought if I could ever submit a comics script to Disney, it would involve Gladstone in those very ways.)
Maybe I'm in the minority, but like I said, I think Barks set up his characters with some wonderful shades of gray and I don't like it when Gladstone gets portrayed as be too much of a one note rival/bully, not that Gladstone doesn't have that side to him, but I think the best Gladstone stories show in more than just than light.

For an example, two of my favorite stories with Gladstone are Luck of the North and Christmas for Shacktown. In the first he is the perfect rival for Donald, but in the latter he understands the Christmas spirit better than Scrooge, who is the "villain" of that story. Again, I love how Barks characters are never one note.

The other great thing about Gladstone in Barks's stories is the cosmic karma that follows Gladstone around, yes, he is lucky, but it has limits and it's not all-encompassing. Gladstone always receives some sort of comic justice in the end and it always seems to be in direct proportion to Donald's humiliation earlier in the story. It was a theme that Barks seemed to be a master of. As an English major I've read both Somerset Maugham's "Grasshopper and the Arts" and Mark Twain's "Luck" both of which deal with cases of people with what can be called "Gladstone luck" but neither of them give the satisfying sense of cosmic retribution and comuppence that Barks's Gladstone stories always have. I just find Gladstone luck and Barks utitlization of it fascinating. I love the themes of hard work vs luck and how Barks plays with them. It's also why I am in agreement with Rosa's theory about Scrooge's #1 and his fortune not being based on any form of luck.

But it also makes me wonder if Gladstone with all his luck could ever be made into a heroic character. In the complexity of Barks's character there are signs that he can and has been. He's just usually too lazy or selfish to do it. But Donald can be lazy and Scrooge can be selfish too. What if something happened to Gladstone that he tried to use his luck for the greater good on occasion. Maybe his greatest source of luck in his life and the one that seems to always elude him would be for him to realize how lucky he is to have Donald and HDL as his family to help him out of some big jam or some lesson he learns like that. Maybe I'm just analyzing too much, but I'm one of those people who likes to analyze and I think it would be cool for any up and coming Duck writers if they want to make their unique mark might look to Gladstone for some inspiration.

So what do think about Gladstone? What do you like (or not like) about him? What are your favorite Barks stories involving him and why? What are the best non-Barks stories about Gladstone? What are the worst ways in which his luck has been portrayed? What would you like to see done with the character of Gladstone that hasn't been yet?

I loathe gladstone as a character, yet I find that many of my favorite stories are those in which he is present such as:
Race to the south seas, secret of hondorica, and the pot of gold under the rainbow story.

I guess that speaks to the strength of the character, in which you can dislike him so much while he plays such a great role as a foil.

I did enjoy Rosa's story on the origin of his luck, but I like to think that he was born with it.

I don't like the idea of Gladstone having gained his abnormal "luck" in some single occurrence in his life. I like to believe that he was born with it (and it runs in his family-as shown in an early '50s Paul Murray-drawn story which introduced 3 of Gladstone's cousins who also shared uncommon good luck).
I don't agree with Rosa's theory of Gladstone being Donald's first cousin on his mother's side, as Carl Barks stated Gladstone's "true" relationship to Scrooge. Scrooge was Gladstone's mother's brother's brother-in-law. He is a distant relative of Donald's, and of Scrooge's, thus neither of the latter have fantastic good luck.
As stated above by others, Gladstone's luck is a curse. His life is an endless chain of fantastic (magical) events that are predictable. He has no hopes, no dreams, no goals. He cannot appreciate the value of anything. He doesn't know the value of working towards a goal, of improving one's skill at various talents and skills needed to survive in this life. He is egotistical, arrogant and void of human feelings. He is an empty shell. A tragic and pathetic character. I would like to use that aspect in some stories. I wrote what I think is a wonderful story of Gladstone having a reunion with a long-lost immediate family member, in which the reader learns the secret of his luck and finds out that he is "human" after all. But, I have been advised by all of my colleagues that have read it that it would be rejected by editors at Sanoma and Egmont (and any other Disney publisher) because it provides a "new history" and changes his character too much. I think that is a shame that we cannot "flesh out" limited characters and only Rosa can write new "Duck history".

Quote from user: GeoXI agree with your assessment of the character, and I think your story should be published. That said, it's hard for me to see why you would discount Rosa's genealogy yet accept some random Paul Murray story (I actually remember that story too, from my dad's collection) as gospel. I'm quite certain that Murray himself wasn't concerned with creating any sort of larger, coherent explanation for the character--it was just a silly gimmick for one story.
Murry didn't write stories. It was written by one of Western's writers. I accept that point of view because it agrees with my World view, and what I think Barks envisioned (though he never defined the luck's origin). I discount Rosa's genealogy because Barks' stated, well-defined genealogy precludes it.

Don Rosa was able to imagine even the most tragic-ironic turnover of Gander's "luck" against its bearer. ;)

Quote:[Don Rosa] talks about his *very first* Duck story that he drew for fun when he was in college in 1969. [...] Look forward to seeing Huey, Dewey and Louie as Hippie Students and Gladstone Gander blowing off his head while playing Russian Roulette...
(Source)

Quote from user: Robb_KI accept that point of view because it agrees with my World view, and what I think Barks envisioned (though he never defined the luck's origin).
Well, then.

Quote from user: CoolwaterGladstone himself believes in that "the stars" take at least some sort of influence on his "luck": At the beginning of "Luck of the North" he bores Donald with reading to him out of his horoscope and claims that he was "born under a lucky star". That he does not just want to fool Donald is attested later in the story where, being alone (or thinking that, respectively), Gladstone studies a horoscope layout of his "lucky star conniving with the planet Neptunus" ...

"The stars" could be indeed at least a partial explanation for the origin of Gladstone's "luck". While astrology is flim-flam in our world, it needn't necessarily be that in the world of Duckburg. Gladstone's "luck" is also impossible in our world, and also are luck-radiating, luck-producing artefacts like the magic hourglass or the lucky dime ("Lost Beneath the Sea" shows that it does do something). But in Duckburg that all is reality. The "cosmic karma" that can get concentrated that way in persons or things (but probably only very seldom in really high doses) could exist in Duckburg as quite real radiation from constellations of planets and stars in the depth of the universe. But it probably also needs special conditions with the "receptor". In Duckburg even such a matter-of-fact man like Scrooge believes in the power of "the stars", by the way. See "Two-Way Luck" (US 31).
The "Stars" COULD have a real effect on Duckburg. But, on the other hand, those characters in Duckburg that believe in them could be superstitious (just like people in our World), and just be misinterpreting coincidences as superstitious people often do. However, we DO see with our very own eyes that the teller of Duckburgian tales shows Gladstone's ridiculous luck as actually occurring. So, it seems that his phenomenal luck is NOT just a bunch of coincidences, and must spring from some source (or have a scientific explanation). In any case, I choose to believe that he was born with it (whatever its source).

Correction: per Rosa's story, the idea is that Daphne was born with special luck due to a mysterious hex that this wandering painter/mystic put on the barn, and Gladstone inherited it from her. So no contradiction. What I get for talking about a story I didn't remember very well.