Enemies: Iron Fist (Danny Rand),
Power Man (Victor Alvarez)
Known
Relatives: Unidentified wife (deceased)
Aliases: None
Base
of Operations: Twilight Idol casino,
Atlantic Ocean
First
Appearance: Power Man and Iron Fist II#2 (April, 2011)
Powers/Abilities: Pokerface is a skilled
gambler; as the emotional centers of his brain have been destroyed, he
can gamble without his emotions clouding his judgment. He has
access to a variety of advanced
technologies.
History: (Power Man and Iron
Fist II#3 (fb) ) -
Discovering
his wife with a lover, the man who would become Pokerface killed them
both in a fit of rage. He fled Vietnam on a cargo ship full
of
illegal immigrants; en route, he lost what little money he had in a
crooked card game. Seeking revenge, he rigged the ship's
boiler
to explode, but the resulting explosion lodged the furnace poker in his
skull. The poker destroyed the emotional centers of his
brain,
allowing him to become the emotionless Pokerface - the self-proclaimed
world's greatest gambler. With the fortune he accrued, he
built
the Twilight Idol, an underwater casino and auction house.
(Power Man and Iron Fist II#5 (fb) ) - After
possessing former Heroes for Hire employee
Jennie Royce and
killing her abusive lover, the Crime-Buster (Eugene Mason),
the Commedia dell'Morte's Columbina used
Royce
to sell her mask
(which contained her essence) to Pokerface, to be auctioned off at his
Auction of Silence.
(Power Man and Iron Fist II#2) -
Heart-Club-Diamond
alerted Pokerface to two new entrants into his Auction of Silence -
Danny Rand and Joy Meachum. Although Heart-Club-Diamond
suggested
that allowing Rand, who their intel suggested was the vigilante Iron
Fist, to enter would be a gamble, Pokerface insisted that he be allowed
to come - because "what else does Pokerface live for?"
(Power Man and Iron Fist II#3) - Iron Fist
confronted
Pokerface in his Twilight Idol office, demanding to know who had sold
him the mask of the Commedia dell'Morte's Columbina, as that mask had
been stolen from his murdered ex-associate, Crime-Buster.
Meanwhile, a recording of Pokerface directed Rand's partner
Power
Man into a labyrinth, where he was confronted with several of
Pokerface's deadly Wild Cards. Pokerface proposed a wager to
Iron
Fist; if he correctly guessed the number of Wild Cards Power Man could
defeat, Pokerface promised to give him the name of Crime-Buster's
killer. If he lost, however, he would surrender the location
of
K'un Lun. After Pokerface promised to flood the labyrinth
with
nerve gas if he refused, Iron Fist guessed that Power Man could defeat
thirty Wild Cards. As they watched the battle, Pokerface
explained his origins; elsewere, another recording directed Joy Meachum
to Columbina's mask, which possessed her. Unaware of this,
Iron
Fist watched as Power Man defeated thirty-eight Wild Cards - meaning
that Pokerface won the bet. Putting up a holographic map of
the
Himalayas, Pokerface's computers tracked Rand's involuntary eye
movements, pinpointing the mystic city's location. Enraged,
Iron
Fist shattered a computer screen, embedding a shard of glass in
Pokerface's hand and sending him fleeing - and prompting him to drop
the scrap of paper he'd written the killer's name on.
(Power Man and Iron Fist II#4) - As Iron
Fist battled
the shadowy vigilante Noir, Pokerface fled...until Power Man burst
through a wall in front of him. Believing Pokerface to have
been
injured, he yanked the poker right out of Pokerface's face, crippling
him with pain. Before he could assist the stricken gambler,
he
was attacked by the Columbina-possessed Meachum - and soon, all three
were swept away by sea water, as Iron Fist and Noir's battle had
breached the outer walls of the underwater casino. While
Power
Man and Meachum survived, Pokerface was nowhere to be found.
Comments:
Created by Fred Van Lente, Wellinton Alves, and Nelson Pereira.
Bizarrely, Power Man and Iron Fist #3, which revealed
Pokerface's origin, came out one week after Amazing Spider-Man #656,
which revealed the origin of Massacre...and both of them involved
chunks of metal cutting off their brain's emotional centers.
Maybe Van Lente and Dan Slott watched a documentary on Phineas
Gage on the same day or something?
Pokerface's floaty assistant guys are never named in
the book; I've dubbed them "Card Faces". I'm not sure what they
are, exactly. They're definitely not human, but they could be
robots or magical constructs or something.
Can't read my, can't read my, no you can't read my...
Located three kilometers outside of US waters in the Atlantic Ocean,
Twilight Idol was Pokerface's base of operations; it contained a
casino, an auction house (equipped to hold "silence auctions", in which
sonic dampeners prevented bidders from communicating with each other),
and a maze-like arena area, in which Pokerface would stage fights
against his Wild Cards. It was accessible via underwater
monorail. During a battle between Iron Fist and Noir, its hull
was breached and it was flooded; its patrons were successfully
evacuated, although Pokerface may have been killed.
(Power Man and Iron Fist II#3) - Pokerface's men abducted vagrants
from the streets of New York and fitted them with masks that injected
them with a variety of psycho-hallucinogenic drugs, transforming them
into his Wild Cards. Pokerface set 38 of them loose in a
maze-like arena, pitting them against Power Man and forcing his
partner, Iron Fist, to wager how many of them he could beat. Iron
Fist bet that Power Man could beat 30, but despite taking a pounding,
Power Man beat them all.
(Power Man and Iron Fist II#4 - BTS) - The Wild Cards were
presumably killed when Twilight Idol was flooded.
(Power Man and Iron Fist II#2) - Heart-Club-Diamond, one of
Pokerface's servants, informed him that Daniel Rand and Joy Meachum had
applied to enter their Auction of Silence; Heart-Club-Diamond suggested
that allowing Rand, who was semi-secretly the vigilante Iron Fist, to
enter would be a gamble, but Pokerface overruled him, as he lived to
gamble.
(Power Man and Iron Fist II#3) - A Card Face ushered Rand, Meachum,
and their guests Vic Alvarez and Tiowa Bryant into the Twilight Idol
underwater monorail. Upon their arrival, another one handed each
of them a thousand-dollar chip, compliments of the house. To sneak into
a restricted area, Rand flipped his chip into the distance; the noise
distracted a Card Face, allowing him to sneak past it. While some of
them helped to administer the Auction of Silence, others restrained
captive vagrants and fitted them with drug-injecting masks, making them
into Wild Cards to battle against Alvarez
(Power Man and Iron Fist II#4) - When a battle between Rand and the
Darkforce-empowered vigilante Noir resulted in Twilight Idol's hull
being breached, the Card Faces helped the casino's patrons evacuate
into the monorails. Several of them survived the casino's destruction.
Heart-Club-Diamond was named; presumably the others were named
for other combinations of playing-card suits.
--Power Man and Iron Fist II#2 (2, 3, 4
images:
(without ads)
Power Man and Iron Fist II#2, p22, pan1 (main image)
Power Man and Iron Fist II#3, p16, pan5
(Pokerface's origin)
Power Man and Iron Fist II#3, p1, pan1 (Twilight Idol)
Power Man and Iron Fist II#3, p12, pan2 (Wild Cards)
Power Man and Iron Fist II#2, p21, pan2 ("Card Faces")
Appearances:
Power Man and Iron Fist II#2-3 (April-May,
2011) - Fred Van Lente (writer), Wellinton Alves
(pencils),
Nelson Pereira (inks), Pere Perez (art), Tom Brennan (editor)
Power Man and Iron Fist II#4-5 (June-July, 2011) - Fred Van Lente (writer), Wellinton Alves
(pencils),
Nelson Pereira (inks), Tom Brennan (editor)
History: (Power Man and Iron
Fist II#3 (fb) ) -
Discovering
his wife with a lover, the man who would become Pokerface killed them
both in a fit of rage. He fled Vietnam on a cargo ship full
of
illegal immigrants; en route, he lost what little money he had in a
crooked card game. Seeking revenge, he rigged the ship's
boiler
to explode, but the resulting explosion lodged the furnace poker in his
skull. The poker destroyed the emotional centers of his
brain,
allowing him to become the emotionless Pokerface - the self-proclaimed
world's greatest gambler. With the fortune he accrued, he
built
the Twilight Idol, an underwater casino and auction house.
