"The Gilded Man" is a 32-page Disney comics story written, drawn, and lettered by Carl Barks.

The main characters in the story are Donald Duck, his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie, and his cousin Gladstone Gander.

His lucky cousin Gladstone finds a stamp album belonging to Philo T. Ellic, a rich collector in Duckburg.

[2] Matthias Wivel writes, "'The Gilded Man' elegantly brings together several of Barks' key concerns as an artist.

It is a nimbly paced, lushly staged yar, spun over the vagaries of fortune and the question of the moral imperative, leavened by colonialist tension."

He notes that the one-cent magenta stamp is real, embedding the quest for adventure in a materialist system.

"As he often does, Gladstone Gander personifies the arbitrariness of this system, idly receiving the benefits of Donald's ever-honest efforts, snatching success from him time and again.

The story thus integrates Barks' paramount concern with moral action in an absurd world into an explicitly materialist framework, anticipating the thematic structure of many a great Scrooge tale to come.