Gladstone Gander

Sometimes I realize I should provide small bits of context on the off-chance that there are people reading this who aren't big duck fans already. I honestly don't know whether that last sentence was meant to be sarcastic or not. But so: Gladstone Gander, of course, is Donald's disgustingly lucky cousin (genealogy: Donald's father Quackmore is Gladstone's mother Daphne's brother). In his first few appearances, Gladstone was just a kind of generic braggart meant to be a foil and mirror image for Donald.


Later, Barks added the luck factor as a way of giving the character a more defined role and making him "lastingly obnoxious." And obnoxious he is--he never, ever works for anything; exactly what he needs or wants falls into his hands, and boy is he ever cocky about it. He rarely comes out on top in his conflicts with Donald; occasionally he wins when Donald behaves in an unusually dishonest manner, but more often either Donald will manage a win or things will end in a draw, with the both of them losing.

There is potential--potential that, given the nature of these things, is naturally never realized in any serious way--for Gladstone to be a tragic character. Everything comes to him, and so he never strives for anything.



Not knowing what it means to work for anything, he is completely passive. There's obviously a kind of implicit spiritual void here; his existence is ultimately a hollow one, his luck more a curse than a blessing, even if Donald, naturally, is unable to see this and desperately wishes for a comparable existence. On some level, however, he and the other protagonists do realize this--take Barks' "Gladstone's Terrible Secret"--they think they're getting to the bottom of why Gladstone is so lucky, but what they end up learning is much more shocking:



The only way they can deal with this perversion of "pride" is with silence--they recognize that there's something deeply warped here.

Donald's bad luck is ultimately a much better deal than Gladstone's good. What he perceives as "bad luck" is in fact merely the condition of existence in a modernist milieu. He has to constantly be striving, and sometimes this involves working himself half to death, but it is in this way that he grows to be a stronger and better person. Gladstone is stuck in a static realm: nothing ever changes; he's never tested in any meaningful way.

Although the parallel is far from exact, I read Sinclair Lewis's great novel Babbitt recently, and I would like to put forth the comparison. In the novel, Babbitt is ensconced in his cozy little bourgeois existence, cheerfully hypocritical, careful never to take on an opinion that deviates even slightly from corporatist conventional wisdom. What makes him interesting is that that's not quite all there is to him: he has occasional intimations that there might be something missing; something hollow at the center of his life. His tragedy stems from the timidity and lack of self-awareness that prevent him acting on this in an effective, lasting way.

Gladstone has as little self-knowledge as Babbitt, and this could easily be taken advantage of to make him into a more interesting, multi-faceted character than he's normally given credit for being. Although it pains me to recommend--even advisedly--a story by the relentlessly uninteresting Pat and Carol McGreal, credit where credit is due: their story "A Gal for Gladstone," published in the US in US374, is the only thing I've ever read that makes any sort of gesture in this direction. The premise is gimmicky, yes, but at the same time it's so compelling that you can't help but read on: Gladstone becomes romantically involved with Magica. An opportunity to invest not one but TWO unidimensional characters with greater depth? Sign me up! And I will say this for it: there is at least some effort at including Pathos. The specifics of the plot are not award-winning: Scrooge favors Donald over Gladstone because Donald has Family Values, what with three kids and a girlfriend (of sorts). Ratface (Magica's raven, DUH! Don't you know ANYTHING?) reports this back to the boss, and Magica comes up with the idea that if she were to become Gladstone's girlfriend he would get into Scrooge's confidence and then she could nab the Number One Dime bwahahahahaha. So she disguises herself and the game's afoot.

No point in going through the story: it's dumb. But the point is: at the end, when the truth is revealed and the affair ends, Gladstone says--and I've never seen anyone else get at this in this way, so maybe I should apologize for calling the McGreals uninteresting, even though everything I've ever read of theirs, is, um...well ANYWAY, he says--"There's nothing like being a fancy-free friend of fortune without a care in the world!" But...



Yes! This is what I'm talking about. Okay, okay--I apologize for calling you uninteresting. Magica is all upset also. Mind you, this would be a lot more effective if their relationship had been previously developed...well, at all, really. It's the thought that counts, however. I guess.

Not to sound like a total fanboy--even though I AM one--but I feel like Don Rosa could have done a smashing job with this same general premise. Still, it shows that there is indeed potential for the character to be more than what he is.