This is (usually but not always) an ongoing (as opposed to a Mini Series) 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 Worlds Finest (also a Superman/Batman team up) don't count. Also not for regularly teaming groups like The Avengers, Justice League, etc.
Subtrope of Crossover. Possibly related to Guest-Star Party Member. Also compare Limelight Series. See Story-Breaker Team-Up when one half of the team-up is massively stronger than the other.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Qualidea Code was hyped as a team-up of several obscure Light Novels.
- My Hero Academia: Team Up Mission is a My Hero Academia spinoff in which provisional heroes (e.g. Class 1-A) are assigned to go on missions teaming up with Pro Heroes.
Comic Books
- Marvel Team-Up: Spider-Man and someone else, almost every time: of the 157 issues from Volume 1, only 11 didn't feature the wall-crawler as one of the team-ees. Of those 11, the Human Torch or the Hulk usually got top billing.
- The later series Spider-Man Team-Up went and put him in the title, so he had to show up every issue.
- In 2011 Marvel launched a series with the same premise, called "Avenging Spider-Man" which in 2013 is being relaunched as Superior Spider-Man Team-Up.
- Volume 2 of Marvel Team-Up (lasting 11 issues) attempted a different approach. Spider-Man appeared in the first seven issues, with five of them forming a story arc. Issue #6 saw Spider-Man team up with Namor, being something of a pass the torch as the Sub-Mariner got a story arc that lasted through the remainder of the series (though #7 was a one-off story teaming up Spidey and Blade). At about this time, several 1998 annuals for various main titles also did team-up stories, probably as a cross-promotional event.
- Volume 3 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. This version lasted 25 issues.
- Ultimate Spider-Man got its own team-up book, Ultimate Marvel Team-Up. Several Ultimate heroes, like the Hulk and Iron Man, first appeared in this one. Its canonicity is a mixed bag: the fight of Spider-Man and Hulk is seen in a flashback in The Ultimates (so it's canon), but the Fantastic Four are openly at odds with the premise of Ultimate Fantastic Four, and so was made not canon. It depends on the issue.
- In 2019, the title was revived, though Spider-Man is Passing the Torch to Kamala Khan, the new Ms. Marvel. The logo even uses her logo font.
- The later series Spider-Man Team-Up went and put him in the title, so he had to show up every issue.
- Marvel Two-in-One: The Thing teams up with other heroes. There was even a team-up with Doc Savage.
- As a matter of fact, one of the first Crossover story arcs occurred between this series and the above-mentioned Marvel Team-Up. Spidey and the Thing went up against Thanos as part of the events of Thanos: The Final Threat.
- The first issue was infamous for a spelling error
◊. Doesn't help that the team-up is with Man-Thing...
- For Marvel Legacy, this title is revived as a semi-limited series where the Thing discovers a message from Mister Fantastic encouraging him and the Human Torch to explore The Multiverse, so they team up together and do so.
- Cable & Deadpool, For most of the issues, it's a Superman/Batman-esque teamup, but the last few issues follow the Spider-Man/Random Marvel Hero formula, after Cable dies.
- Deadpool Team-Up saw Marvel returning to the Big Name Character/Random Marvel Hero formula, with a focus on random. In some issues, he teams up with The Mighty Thor, The Incredible Hercules, and the Ghost Riders; in others, he teams up with It, the Living Colossus, Mr. X, the Zapata Brothers, or Hellcow.
- DC Comics Presents: Superman and other heroes. Typically, he would team up with heroes or teams who were 'too space-y' for Batman in Brave and the Bold (see below). He also famously met He-Man in one issue, which marked the first ever comics appearance for the character.
- 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.
- There were in turn two comics based on The 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.
- 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 started 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 (2004).
- Marvel also had Super-Villain Team-Up once, which was about exactly what it sounds like. It lasted 17 issues (plus two Giant-Size issues) and starred Doctor Doom (except for the last two issues, which had Red Skull instead), with Namor the Sub-Mariner appearing as Doom's co-star in 11 of those issues.
- 2011 saw Marvel relaunch Captain America into Captain America and..., with a different hero taking second billing every few issues. This didn't last too long, and the book was relaunched with a new Captain America #1 about a year later.
- DC did something similar with Batman and Robin in 2013, after Robin died — though in this case, every issue (in most cases) changed the second-billing hero. At first he teamed up with characters he was already associated with, like Catwoman or Nightwing. Then, during the events of Forever Evil (2013), he teamed up with Two-Face. The "Hunt for Robin" arc takes him out of Gotham and has him teaming up with Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and even Frankenstein's Monster.
- Part of the 2013 Marvel NOW!, Wolverine gets a Team-Up series called Savage Wolverine based around pairing Wolverine up with various heroes in action packed stories.
- AvX: VS, a part of the Avengers vs. X-Men event, it was a variation on the team up idea with two combinations (one member of The Avengers with a member of the X-Men) squaring off against each other in the backdrop of the event.
- The "X-Statix/Avengers" arc in ''X-Statix was similar, pairing up members of both teams to duke it out. The Anarchist vs. Captain America! Mr. Sensitive vs. Iron Man!
- A+X, a Team-Up series spinning out of AvX: VS, based around the same idea of the VS series except instead of battling each other (most of the time), it is a proper team-up in pairing off members from the two franchises in one and done stories with a smaller or equally sized backup story in the issue with a different pair of characters.
- World's Finest (1941): While most of the series focused on the regular team of Superman and Batman, there was a period at the beginning of the 70's where Batman was phased out and Superman teamed up with various DC heroes such as The Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, the Teen Titans, and even the Vigilante in addition to the Dark Knight. Batman eventually became Superman's regular partner again after a year and a half.
- Harleys Little Black Book, a series featuring Harley Quinn teaming up with and/or fighting a different guest character each issue.
- IDW's Powerpuff Girls Super Smash-Up sees the trio teaming up with various Cartoon Network characters.
- Scooby-Doo! Team-Up, which features the Scooby-Doo gang teaming up with DC Comics characters like Batman and Superman, animated adaptations of DC characters like the Superfriends and Teen Titans Go! incarnations, and other Hanna-Barbera characters like The Flintstones and Jonny Quest.
- IDW's Revolutionaries, featuring characters from across the Hasbro Comic Universe.
- The Joker is a short-lived series that saw the Joker himself either fighting heroes outside of Batman, or teaming up with other villains (or otherwise fighting them). The second issue, in which he helps a criminal named Willie the Weeper pull off a heist, inspired a Villain Episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold called "Joker: The Vile and the Villainous".
- From the pages of Dynamite and Archie Comics, comes the unusual team of Red Sonja and Vampirella meet Betty and Veronica. The two Bad Girl heroines investigate a murder in Riverdale, when our two high school reporters also go to check out the same body, leading to this team-up adventure.
Fan Works
- The MUSHU-Verse
- Super Milestone Wars and it's sequel.
- The Brave and the Bold: The Lost Issues portrays hypothetical crossover stories between comic book characters.
Live-Action TV
- The Vs. series from Super Sentai, and Movie Wars for its sister franchise, Kamen Rider. Despite the names, the heroes work together rather than fighting each other. (However, the Super Hero Wars series is about heroes fighting each other over some contrived conflict until they team up in the end.)
Tabletop Games
- Reality Storm, a crossover sourcebook between Silver Age Sentinels and Champions, was designed to resemble a multiple-part team-up comic, complete with a full cover on each chapter.
Video Games
- Super Robot Wars is an ongoing series of games teaming up multiple Humongous Mecha Anime characters; some of the games even have continuing storylines.
Western Animation
- The New Scooby-Doo Movies features multiple team-ups, such as the gang teaming up with Batman and Robin, the Harlem Globetrotters, various celebrities and literary figures, and other Hanna-Barbera characters like Josie and the Pussycats and Speed Buggy.
- Several decades later, it got a Spiritual Successor with Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, which also features the gang teaming up with various fictional characters (including Batman once again) and real-life celebrities.
- Batman: The Brave and the Bold, per the above note. As in the comic, Batman teams up with a different hero in just about every episode (and often another one in the episode's cold open). Unlike the comic, there are a few exceptions to this, as there are episodes where either Batman or the team-up concept (or even both) don't figure too heavily into the story.
- One episode followed the Joker and his Villain Team-Up with the Weeper. The Joker even got his own version of the opening sequence.
- Ultimate Spider-Man has been compared to The Brave and the Bold for its frequency of guest characters (heroes and villains alike), especially in its first season.
- Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends also frequently featured guest super heroes and villains in nearly every episode in addition to the main trio.
- Justice League Action is often seen as the Spiritual Successor to both TB&TB and Justice League, with a member of the DC big three teaming up with someone lesser known. Batman and Shazam!, Superman and Space Cabbie, the big three guest starring Plastic Man and John Constantine, Wonder Woman and Booster Gold vs. a possessed Batman, etc.
