Despicable Deadpool #297

Part of Marvel Legacy's "The Marvel Universe Kills Deadpool" arc, issue #297 sets the stakes with a wonderfully chaotic casino tableau — a tiny, action-posed Deadpool stands on a craps table amid flying dice and poker chips while an imposing, purple-suited figure looms over him with a clenched fist, flanked by a crowd that includes Black Cat, a cybernetic figure, a wild-haired woman, a clown-faced gunman, a hulking blue villain crackling with lightning, and a flaming Jack-o'-lantern-headed figure. Mike Hawthorne's cover art crackles with tension and dark humor, capturing that signature Deadpool energy where the odds are laughably impossible and somehow still negotiable. If you've been following Wade's spectacularly bad decisions, this issue promises the ante has been raised considerably.