Gladstone Gander
is the character that is lucky all the time. This luck is so unnatural
that it sometimes amazes the reader how far it can go. Most of the times
it is for agony of Donald Duck who is the
steady loser. On the picture on the left Gladstone talks to his nephews
about his terrible secret: He had once worked! "And I have been so ashamed
of it ever since that I hid it in that safe and never looked at
it again!" he says. Normally his life is financed by sheer luck. He appeared
first in 1948. Carl Barks used this character mainly to set him apart from
Donald Duck and to show how luck can be one of the most agonizing things
for most people. There is Uncle Scrooge who
had to work hard for his fortune, there is Donald Duck who tries hard but
never succeeds and then there is Gladstone Gander who doesn't work hard
but is successful nonetheless. (The picture on the left is from Walt
Disney's Comics and Stories #140)
© by The Walt Disney Company