Marvel’s Avengers Save The World By… Playing Poker!!!

If saving the world from a tyrant intent on destroying earth and its 7 billion human inhabitants came down to a game of poker, who would you choose to play? You might get a few answers in the real world, but for Marvel comics’ Avengers the task has fallen to a D-list comic book hero, the ‘Living Lightning’!

Never heard of him? Nope, me neither, but apparently the comic book version of the guy at your local casino who punts off 3 stacks a night is all that stands between arch-baddie ‘the Grandmaster’ and his destruction of the planet! Scary times indeed, but the ‘Living Lightning’ may just have an ace up his sleeve…

The comic strip version of The Avengers may be a niche for ‘nerds’, but the big-screen adaptations have been a massive success, next week seeing the 3rd movie in the modern series – Avengers: Infinity Wars - to hit the big screen following the Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Back in the 2D world of fantastic characters and bizarre storylines, we find the Living Lightning desperately trying to save his imprisoned fellow Avengers, in a game which escalates to a fight for the entire planet, our hero offering out the evil Grandmaster with a game of No Limit Texas Hold’em.

The old ‘if you could have one superpower what would it be’ question is usually answered by ‘X-ray vision’, especially by teenage boys with an interest in comics and girls – the two desires often considered to inhabit different plants! – and here it might actually be a great choice.

But ‘superuser’ powers are no longer in Living Lightning’s arsenal, the hitherto unheralded Avenger having given them all away to save a fellow superhero…

As Screenrant.com’s Thomas Bacon writes: ‘Lightning has to play the hand he’s been dealt. He doesn’t have the power to challenge an Elder of the Universe. He only has his own skills and instincts, and those lead him to believe he can still triumph. Because, even with the Earth itself as the prize, he still has one more thing to wager.’

 With ‘A distant corner of the galaxy becoming a cosmic gameboard for an insane battle between the Grandmaster and the Challenger’, will a game of poker decide the fate of the entirety of humanity? Or will the Avenger’s somehow prevail..?