The Perfect Marvel Comics Playing Cards
The Origin
And Lo! There came a day when boredom threatened to overcome me, and I found naught to entertain myself save a blank excel spread sheet and my own mental repository of Marvel Comics information. As I puzzled over how to best use these resources to keep myself from sinking into a coma, Behold! A shaft of inspiration, like unto the Bifrost Bridge, pierced the clouds and an epiphany can upon me…
The Quest
I shall create THE PERFECT DECK OF MARVEL COMICS PLAYING CARDS! No! I shall create TWO perfect decks of Marvel Comics playing cards! One for the heroes and one for the villains, AND I shall have the characters so aligned that the two decks can be interspersed so that great and legendary match-ups can occur in the course of a game! But, was such and undertaking possible?
I had seen similar decks before, with great scientists, composers, world leaders…but THIS was important. THIS was COMICS.
At first I just took a shot by eyeballing it. As soon as the idea is mentioned we all (at least everyone who visits this site) get a vague idea of what it should look like. Certain characters have to be included. Certain characters have to be face cards. Once you start working on it, however, you realize things are more complicated that you may have thought…
The Challenges
The Number of Characters
There are 52 cards in a deck! Plus jokers! That’s quite a few characters! Therefore, it was off to the Marvel Encyclopedia for a list of everybody that bares consideration. It was pretty comprehensive. Sleepwalker? Why not? Hey! Don’t want to forget Red Ghost and Puppet Master! The only problem was I ended up with 103 heroes and 119 villains. You don’t want to leave anybody out, but then again, not everybody can make the final cut. A comprehensive sorting system was going to have to be put in place, but first, there were two obvious issues…
X-men
Holy crap! Do you realize how many X-Men there are? They have their OWN encyclopedia! They could have their own deck, but you don’t want to leave them out of the main deck completely. It pained me, but steps had to be taken to keep the number of X-Men associated character in both decks to a reasonable level.
Spider-Man’s Rogues Gallery
Good grief! Look at how many Spider-Man villains there are! And after you throw out the likes of the Kangaroo and Leap-Frog, they’re mostly pretty cool. However, as with the X-Men, a limit must be placed. Sorry guys, but if Spidey is the only guy you’ve ever fought, you might not make the cut.
Side Switchers
Wait a minute, do Deadpool and Emma Frost go in the heroes deck? What about Venom? Galactus is a bad guy like a hurricane is a bad guy, so does he get include at all?* These were mostly judgment calls, but I tried to go with what I thought was the most enduring interpretation of the character.
The Rankings
You know what I mean. Yeah, I mean Daredevil is cool, but should his card really trump that of a less popular but more powerful character like, say, Nova? Let’s face it, in any deck somebody is going to have to be a 2. Four somebody’s actually. So what are the criteria? Popularity? Power? Hmmm…
The Process
• First, everybody got placed in one of four categories: 1)Must Include, 2)Probably Include, 3)Favored Filler, and 4)Nah. Unfortunately this still left me with way more than 54 characters per deck and it didn’t solve any of the issues of ranking.
• Second, everybody that wasn’t in the Nah category got a score for Power on a scale of 13 (based on cards per suit) and a Score for Coolness on a scale of 10. Those scores got totaled, and then the whole thing got sorted by score and category.
• Third, it was time to make the hard calls. If a character is a king, should he be a king in the deck? If their costume is black, should they be a spade or a club? If they’ve got that anti-hero attitude, should they be a jack? Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut.
The Results
BEHOLD! THE PERFECT MARVEL COMICS PLAYING CARDS DECKS!
Of course I exaggerate, but I was pretty happy with them.
(Still working on the other images. Want to help? Post below!)
Plus, check out some of the cool combos you get if you swap some suits between the heroes and the villains.
And imaging playing poker with these bad boys. Here are just a few crazy rules you could use:
Luke Cage and Iron Fist = Pair of Kings
Cloak and Dagger = Pair of Tens
Fantastic Four = Straight, Queen High
The possibilities are endless.
The Petitions First, to Marvel: Alright guys, I’ve looked and you have nothing like this on the shelves. Every deck you have has multiple repeated characters. NOT COOL. Get your head in the game! Don’t you want to raise awareness of your characters? I haven’t physically made these cards yet, and I don’t want too, but I MAY. And if I do, that’s money that stays in my pocket instead of going into yours. You don’t want that, do you? Ask Disney and they’ll confirm that you don’t want that!
Can’t…bring myself…to deface…trading cards!
Second, to the Fans: DC fans, are you going to let this stand? Marvel having the perfect deck and DC not even represented? Marvel Fans, you know you don’t agree with me. It’s not actually perfect. So get out there and come up with your own! Check out my wife’s:
See? That’s cool too!
Well, there you go. My first editorial. Sorry I didn't really tie in movies, but I had fun making it and I hope you had fun reading it. Discuss below! I look forward to it.
*The next big hurricane should definitely be called hurricane Galactus. THAT will get people to evacuate!