If You're a Bad Guy, DO NOT Play Poker in the Marvel Universe

I can't help it. I notice some obscure bit of pop culture trivia and I just gotta share it. I literally can't help myself.

In the 1979 prose novel Holocaust for Hire, by Joseph Silva (aka: Ron Goulart), Captain America attacks some mobsters, interrupting a poker game with one of the thugs complaining that he had a straight flush.

cover art by Dave Cockrum

That same year, in the prose novel And Call My Killer... Modok!, by William Rotsler (reviewed HERE), Happy Hogan is escaping from an AIM base and gets the drop on some AIM guards playing poker. One of them complains that he had the only royal flush he'd ever drawn.

cover artist by Bob Larkin

The lesson: If you are a low-level crook in the Marvel Universe and get a straight flush or royal flush during a poker game--you are NOT lucky. You are cursed. Drop, roll and draw your weapon because the game is about to be violently interrupted by a superhero or sidekick. 

You can, by the way, get electronic versions of the Marvel Novel Series from the 1970s HERE.