THEOSTRACISEDCHARACTER

Whenever Carl Barks needed new primary characters to use in his Disney comic book stories he invented them to his specific requirements at the time. Usually, the characters were 'born' with special appearances and characteristics, and they were constructed so well that they could be used in multiple later stories. Just think of the unbelievable miser Scrooge McDuck, the bungling bandits The Beagle Boys, the phenomenal inventor Gyro Gearloose, or the relentless witch Magica de Spell. But one of Barks' many recurring, new characters was different. Gladstone Gander was at first presented as a challenge and counterpart to his cousin Donald Duck, but soon he developed the uncanny and frowned upon streak of luck that rarely left him. He was also one of the few characters that actually changed appearance as time went on.
Barks soon found himself trapped by Gladstone's irritating and unlikable personality that turned out to be very restricting. Barks stated that he grew tired of the character and found it hard to come up with new means of displaying his uncanny luck and his arrogant superiority towards Donald, and he regretted that he never succeeded in giving Gladstone human values or redeeming features as he did with Donald and Scrooge. Below are some examples of this ostracised character.

THE TRAITS
Even though Gladstone was portrayed as a quite unfacetted character, Barks did, after all, manage to present him with a certain number of different traits of both the negative and the positive kinds. Below are some examples.
WDCS136 'Turkey Raffle' Insulting	WDCS136 'Turkey Raffle' Desperate	WDCS207 'Burro Catching Contest' Effortlessly lucky
WDCS131 'A Day at the Golf Course' Clumsy	WDCS270 Jinxed Jalopy Race Insensitive	WDCS147 'A Needy Person - Not!' Blackmailing
WDCS163 'The Swami's Pearls' Belittling	WDCS217 'Stage-struck' Disparaging	MOC41 Race to the South Seas Surprised
WDCS151 'The Easter Parade' Sick	WDCS167 'The Fishing Contest' Ridiculed	WDCS225 'Volunteer Fireman' Selfish
WDCS095 'Braggers Unlimited' Bragging	WDCS294 Duck Out of Luck Secretive	WDCS243 Turkey Trouble Melancholic
U$54 The Billion Dollar Safari Perplexed	WDCS110 'The Goldilocks Story' Working	FC0263 Trail of the Unicorn Swindling
WDCS151 'Easter Disaster' Despicable	WDCS143 'Gems in the Desert' Astronomically lucky	WDCS205 'Prizeless Apples' Obnoxious
CP2 You Can't Guess Depressive	WDCS126 'The Money Crib' Loafing	FC0367 Christmas for Shacktown Indifferent
WDCS128 'Knight Brawl' Nasty	WDCS096 'Hole-in-One - or Two' Ecstatic	FC1161 The Training Farm Fuss Stressed
WDCS140 'Gladstone's Dark Secret' Demoralized	WDCS117 'The Flooded Picnic' Superior	FC1095 The Bear Tamer King of Luck

THE CHANGES

Gladstone is by far the most modified character in Barks' duck universe. In reality, he does not even belong in the duck family. He is portrayed as a goose (like Gus Goose) but it is only his beak that differs from that of the ducks. But as you can see from the few panels below, Barks did, after all, end up giving him a duck's beak.

1948

1950

1953

1966