A Little Bit of Luck

In honor of Deadpool 2 coming out today, I thought I’d talk a bit about Domino, who’s power is ‘luck.’ Specifically, how do you figure that out?

There are a handful of luck-powered heroes in the Marvel universe: Longshot, Black Cat, and Domino. At least, those are the ones I can think of off-hand. There might be some c-list villains or something floating around in the errata.

Longshot is a mutant (originally an alien) who is lucky as long as his motives are pure. This seems a bit tricky to define. Rescuing a kitten from a burning building is probably ‘pure.’ Rescuing a kitten from a burning building instead of rescuing, oh . . . say, a little old lady, maybe not. Pushing a politician into a burning building might also count as pure.

Black Cat is an on-again, off-again romantic interest of Spider Man. She is unusual in that she gives good luck to her allies and bad luck to her enemies. In addition, in the tradition of most comics, she is staggeringly good-looking. Which means that Peter Parker is dating Mary Jane (a model) in normal mode while being pursued by Black Cat as Spider Man. Not bad for a ‘nerdy’ science kid.

Anyway, back to Domino. She can make things happen in her favor by wanting them to, which is kind of interesting. If she has no knowledge an attack is coming, such as a hippo falling on her from out of the clear blue sky, she can’t do anything to stop it. However, if she does, then she can use her power to make the hippo miss or to cause some sort of trampoline carrying semi-truck mishap which bounces the hippo away. Regardless, it’s probably not going to be a good day for the hippo.

Why she just hasn’t walked into a casino, played one spin on the ’10 Million Dollar’ slot machine, and retired is beyond me.

NOTE: All of these definitions and such are at the whim of the writer. And you know how those guys are.

Which brings me to my next point: how do you figure out your power is luck? Shooting lasers from your eyes or being super-strong are pretty obvious. Invulnerability, though one might soil themselves the first time they figure it out, is also straight-forward.

Luck, however, can take so many possible forms that any sort of testing for it would be flawed. What if you’re only lucky in life-or-death situations? Would you want to attempt a test that will actually kill you if you’re wrong? You could only be lucky in regards to potted plants. No fern, no matter what condition, will ever die if its in your bedroom. You might be amazingly lucky, but only when wearing a red hat or affecting people wearing red hats.

It’s such a weirdly specific, yet vaguely defined ability. Yet, in Domino’s case, it seems to work for her.

Lucky that.

Cheers,

-Jason