Team-Up Series

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Alice Girl is so cool. Wouldn't it be great if she and Bob Man would team up? Even better - next month it could be The Amazing Charlie, the month after that Dandevil, then Elf Edna, then Fin Fang Fred, then Gertrude the Great....

This is (usually but not always) an ongoing (as opposed to a Miniseries) Comic Book series built around the concept of two (sometimes more but usually just two) heroes teaming up - it usually has one main star which others team up with, but not always. Series where the main characters pretty much only team up with each other, like Superman/Batman and World's Finest (also a Superman/Batman team up) don't count. Also not for regularly teaming groups like The Avengers, Justice League of America, etc.

Subtrope of Crossover. Possibly related to Guest Star Party Member. Also compare Limelight Series.

Examples of Team-Up Series include:

Comics

  • Marvel Team-Up: Spider-Man and someone else, almost every time: only of the 157 issues from Volume 1, only 11 didn't feature the wall-crawler as one of the team-ees.
    • The later series Spider-Man Team-Up went and put him in the title, so he has to show up every issue.
    • The most recent version of Marvel Team-Up didn't focus on Spider-Man; usually they were one-time teamups, although there was a Half Arc Season through the series regarding new villain Titannus.
    • Ultimate Spider-Man got his own team-up book, Ultimate Marvel Team-Up.
  • Marvel Two-In-One: The Thing teams up with other heroes.
  • Cable and Deadpool, For most of the issues, it's a Superman/Batman-esque teamup, but the last few issues follow the Spiderman/Random Marvel Hero formula, after Cable dies.
  • Deadpool Team-Up
  • DC Comics Presents: Superman and other heroes.
  • Action Comics was a Superman team-up book for a while Post-Crisis after DC Comics Presents ended.
  • The Brave and the Bold: Batman teams up with others. The Trope Codifier. The animated series Batman the Brave And The Bold was named after and gets its concept from this.
    • Recently there were in turn two comics based on Brave And The Bold- One was a direct adaptation of the animated series, with original stories and no continuity with the main DC Universe. The other was canonical but did not have Batman or any other hero as a regular guest star.
    • It should be noted that The Brave and the Bold started off as an anthology title focusing on Ye Olden Days type heroes such as Silent Knight and Viking Prince. After that fizzled, it became a second try out book for DC (after the success of the legendary Showcase) and helped launch such instrumental DC titles as the Justice League and the Teen Titans. Teams such as those proved popular, so it start pairing up various random heroes, but the Batman team-ups sold better and before long Batman was in every team-up they did. So, at one point or another, the title was every single variation on this trope.
  • The relaunched version of Adventure Comics.
  • Super Team Family a short-lived title from the Bronze Age, with no set main star. Obscure today, but ironically influential since one of its plotlines involved the mental instability of The Atom's wife, which would be a pivotal element decades later in Identity Crisis.
  • Marvel also had Super Villain Team Up once, which was about exactly what it sounds like.


Fan Works


Video Games


Western Animation