You will not find many Carl Barks stories, in which Gladstone Gander was not chiefly portrayed as being lucky. Of course not, because the character's whole existence depends on his incredible and thoroughly irritating lucky streaks! Without those he would never have been able to influence Daisy, Scrooge, and Donald the negative way he always did. And Gladstone's immense luck was combined with other - very negative - streaks such as laziness, self-importance, cold-heartedness, boasting, and belittlement.
Barks never succeeded in giving Gladstone either human values or redeeming features, and he was painfully aware of his character's fatal flaws:
I don't think anybody likes a character who gets by with so little effort in the world. They like to feel that other people have just as much of a struggle as they themselves have, and Gladstone was a fellow who would just go along, skimming all the cream out of life, without ever sweating for it.
But, against all odds you might say, Barks succeeded in churning out 51 stories with Gladstone in major or minor roles, and he also managed to disperse with some of the monotonous luck in the plot lines by also furnishing him with distinct unlucky streaks! In fact, in a great many of the stories Barks let Gladstone be both lucky and unlucky, which is not always recognized when you think of Gladstone in general.

In the sub-pages you are, for the first time ever, presented to all of Barks' stories featuring Gladstone (he never made it to the front covers). The stories are presented in chronological order enabling you to follow his development.

 

1948-1949 1950-1952 1953-1957 1958-1960 1961-1966

 


http://www.cbarks.dk/THEGLADSTONESTORIES.htm   Date 2008-10-18