Deadpool’s well known for his love of one-liners and being absolutely merciless to his foes. He may have been friends with Domino in the past but is that enough for them to reach a reconciliation after he’s been sent to stop her and the Hotshots? Domino: Hotshots #2 is an action-packed story by Gail Simone, pitting the ‘Merc with a Mouth’ against Domino’s luck and her friends fighting skills. The story rounds out with the art team of David Baldeón with Jim Charalampidis on colors and letting by VC’s Clayton Cowles.

The newly formed Hotshots aren’t doing so hot with their first mission. After tracking down a mysterious artifact they lose the artifact and the man who found it in the fight that also injured Outlaw. With the arrival of Deadpool who has been sent to stop the team at all costs, Domino needs all the help she can get if she doesn’t want the first mission to also be their last.

Adding Deadpool to an already large main cast of characters is a risky move. He has a big stage presence and an even bigger personality so it would be easy for him to overshadow Domino in the story despite, her name being in the title. The risk really pays off however because Simone fits Deadpool into the story like he’s been part of the team all along. His sense of humor plays well off of Domino’s, and their shared history allows them to have an established camaraderie. His addition also helps to emphasize the kind of leader Domino is turning into as she tries to balance all of the conflicting personalities (and egos) of her team.

Many of the panels in this issue have a lot of dialogue which ends up overshadowing the art. Most of the space in these panels is taken up by text boxes and speech bubbles, Baldeón is left with little room to work with. Only portions of characters are able to be shown, or the characters are drawn from farther away, cutting down on the number of details and making action sequences feel less fluid. Charalampidis’ colors are less affected by this but they still feel a bit blurred out in places.

As exciting as the addition of more characters from the larger Marvel universe is, this series is only a limited run. There’s only so much space for worldbuilding to happen and for the story to have a progression that doesn’t feel rushed there are only three more issues. If Simone and company try to go too big for the space they have, the series will suffer for it.

GRADE: B-