Teeth Clenched Teamwork / Comic Books

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• Batman:
  • Crops up whenever Batman and Judge Dredd have a crossover — since Batman is a somewhat freelancing vigilante, while Dredd is the law, they're willing to work together to bring down their enemies, but that doesn't mean they have to enjoy each others' company. Especially given Batman's strict no-killing rule, while Dredd won't bat an eyelid to shoot a criminal if necessary.
  • In Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman: Gothamazon: Gotham goes to hell in a matter of hours, four to be exact, when the Bat-Rogues manage to actually team up properly for once. Barbara Gordon outright states the Bat-Family and Birds of Prey often rely on the Joker, Two-Face, and Crane's complete inability to work together so everyone putting aside their differences is very not good for Gotham. The only one whose not fully on board is Man-Bat, who doesn't really want to hurt anyone but is not very intelligent in his transformed state and has been convinced Joker can give him the serum to turn back. In the end the rogues start turning on each other anyway.
• Blaze of Glory: The main cast mostly work with each other quite well, but this is definitely the case for 11th-Hour Ranger Caleb Hammer and Kid Colt. Caleb even refuses to drink with him because Colt had killed his friends in a fit of rage.
• Brody's Ghost: Brody and Talia in the first part of the comic, with Talia constantly insulting Brody for his slobby slacker lifestyle and Brody for how pushy Talia is to make him hunt down a Serial Killer. Over time they warm up to each other, although when he learns that she lied to him about why they were hunting the killer down, their relationship breaks back down into this once more.
• Captain America: Secret Empire deconstructs this trope alongside Let's You and Him Fight. After several crossovers involving nothing but superheroes fighting each other, this is all they have left to keep them from falling apart. But with no real trust between them, there's no motivation to patch things up or a desire to help each other beyond what is absolutely necessary. So when Evil Captain America swoops in, he all-too-easily plays divide-and-conquer to keep everyone from foiling his plans.
• Fantastic Four:
  • The Fantastic Four might be the Trope Maker (especially when it comes to the Thing and Human Torch), but even they resorted to The Power of Friendship when they were in deep trouble...
  • Doctor Doom has, on occasion, teamed up with Red Skull... but only when something really big was in it for Doom, as he usually loathes the Skull (Doctor Doom is of Romani descent, while Red Skull is a Nazi).
• The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones: In issue #30, Indy is forced into a uneasy partnership with a Trigger-Happy IRA agent named Michael Cobb as they travel to China to retrieve items belonging to them from a warlord: a shipment of arms he swindled the IRA out of, and a mummy destined for Indy's museum that he misdirected as part of a smuggling scheme.
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2008):
  • Rocket and Cosmos, constantly. It happens when you're a racoon and a dog.
  • Adam Warlock only rejoins the team during War of Kings because of the threat of the destruction of everything, everywhere, and makes clear he's still extremely pissed at Peter for the whole "using Mantis to convince everyone to join" thing. They agree to at least not yell in front of each other in front of the others. But they never get a chance to properly reconcile, thanks to Adam becoming the Magus.
• The Janus Directive: The crossover pitted the Suicide Squad and Checkmate under Amanda Waller, Project Atom under Wade Eiling, and the Department of Metahuman Affairs under Sarge Steel against each other. Despite its initial success, everyone chose to eat crow and fight together rather than allow Kobra to fire his microwave cannon. However, the President had enough of the three's Interservice Rivalry and reorganized all three agencies under the same umbrella rather than the original freedom each enjoyed.
• Jonah Hex: Jonah Hex really doesn't like Bat Lash, a frequent teammate, to the point when saving a drowning man and finding it to be Lash, he threw him back in the river. However, this is mostly one-sided — Lash often finds Hex annoying, but regards himself as in Hex's debt due to the number of times he's saved Lash's life. And the easygoing Bat honestly tries to get along with everyone he meets.
• Justice League of America:
  • In JLA: Tower of Babel, Ra's al Ghul has incapacitated the JLA using Batman's anti-JLA contingency plans. Like exposing Superman to red kryptonite. Once Batman reveals that he's the one responsible, most of the team (especially Plastic Man, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter) are closer to killing him than working with him, but they push through. In the end, he's expelled from the League. For a few issues. In a neat epilogue, Batman's extended family is shown being mistrusted by their own teams (the Titans don't trust Nightwing, Young Justice doesn't trust Robin, and the JLA stop calling Oracle for advice).
  • This pretty much describes the Crime Syndicate of America, a group of Evil Counterparts of the Justice League from Earth-3, at least when they do show teamwork. Unlike the true League, they despise each other, each member using blackmail, threats, or both as protection from betrayal.
• Lesbian Zombies from Outer Space: Ace is a guy who fantasizes about hot lesbians who want to bang him. Gwen is a lesbian who hates guys like that. And now they have to work together.
• Nextwave: The Nextwave Squad, a superhero team formed by what turned out to be a supervillain corporation, on a mission of retaliation with stolen equipment and feeling like it.
  Monica Rambeau: No. Enough. You people will by God act like a team, or at least like people who know each other, or I'll incinerate the bunch of you here and now.
• The Punisher: The series almost always has to employ this trope whenever Frank Castle teams up with someone who isn't an Anti-Hero like him. He and Spider-Man can't stand each other, but they can usually swallow their bile long enough to cooperate against whichever bad guy they're both after.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Two of Robotnik's henchmen, Tundra and Akhlut, hate each other and only work together because Robotnik orders them to. Before Robotnik showed up they were rivals locked in a bitter turf war, so there's a lot of bad blood going on. Eventually, the idea gets deconstructed when their extreme hatred of each other leads to them almost blowing a major operation by getting into a fistfight mid-mission, nearly getting the rest of the Egg Bosses killed.
• Spider-Man: Spider-Man feels this way about Wolverine, disliking Wolverine's willingness to kill and his generally sour attitude. It doesn't help matters that Wolverine long since figured out Spider-Man's civilian identity on account of his heightened senses, and he has no problem knocking on Peter Parker's front door when he wants to talk Spider-business — nor the fact that Spidey and Wolverine have actually fought multiple times over their different viewpoints. Again, when the chips are down they've got each other's back.
• Supergirl:
  • Green and Red Lanterns don't get along... at all. However, in Red Daughter of Krypton Hal Jordan's GL squad and Guy Gardner's RL group worked together to help Supergirl to get her mind and her sanity back while she was suffering from power ring-induced madness.
  • In Many Happy Returns super-villain Xenon has this with his sometimes ally the Fatalist. They don't like each other but the Fatalist helps him for his own reasons, simultaneously withholding crucial information from Xenon.
  • In Gates/Igle's run final arc Day of the Dollmaker, Supergirl and Catherine Grant have to work together to find a child kidnapper even though they can't stand each other.
  • In The Hunt for Reactron, Supergirl and Flamebird's teamwork is strained because they cannot stop bickering and even fighting...mainly because Kara blames Thara for her father's death, and because she is unable to respect Thara's beliefs.
  • In The Phantom Zone, the inmates imprisoned in the Zone try to work together to escape from the "Twilight Dimension" and destroy Superman. However, two of them — General Dru-Zod and Faora Hu-Ul — cannot stand each other at all. Zod does not tolerate insubordination, and Faora refuses to follow a male's orders.
• Transformers: In the comic, this often happens when opposing factions face an Enemy Mine situation (the Time Wars and attack of Unicron, for instance), but some set groups within the canon fall victim to it as well. The car-based Decepticon combiner team the Stunticons are noted to loathe their loud, browbeating leader, Motormaster, and generally not get along with each other, as their team includes a vain but depressingly fatalistic killjoy, a paranoiac who fears he's being watched by everything (including inanimate objects), a over-competitive braggart with an ego the size of an immodest planetoid, and an unhinged maniac who terrifies the other four with 'Terrorist' for a function.
  • This is also how basically every major group in The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye happens. The heroic ones, such as the crew of the Lost Light, get the hang of it and become Fire-Forged Friends; the villainous ones, like Tyrest's minions in "Remain in Light" or the Grand Architect's minions, generally don't and are kept under control through bribery or fear.
    Pharma: I'll tell our lord and master that you're still playing chase with the others — don't stay out too late!
    Lockdown: Pharma, we really must sit down some time so I can explain why we all hate you. We'll start with your personality and go from there.
• Union Jack: In the 2007 miniseries, the Israeli agent Sabra is forced to work alongside the modern Arabian Knight, who works for the Saudi Arabian government, in order to help Union Jack stop a planned terrorist attack in London. Neither is exactly thrilled by the notion.
• West Coast Avengers: Hawkeye left the West Coast Avengers because he couldn't stand U.S. Agent. When he returned, the latter was still on the team. The dislike was mutual, leading them to start trading blows quite often. They still worked together pretty well when the situation called for it.
• X-Men:
  • Kitty Pryde is this when it comes to Emma Frost, due to her past with her. That is, until they finally got along when the former is trapped in the space bullet.
  • In X-Men Red (2022), this is the dynamic between Thunderbird and Cable, since John despises Cable partly because he thinks he manipulated John's little brother, but also just because Cable is Cyclops' son. By the time everything's over, Cable takes John merely threatening to tear his head off and shove it somewhere unpleasant as him warming up to Cable.
• X-Statix: This was the dynamic between the Anarchist and the rest of the team, Spike and the rest of the team, and especially Spike and the Anarchist. The Anarchist and Spike are both African-American, but the Anarchist is adopted and his parents are white; Spike feels that this makes him, well, not a real black guy, and will never let him forget that; On rare occasions where the two agree on anything, it's usually in the form of Dumbass Has a Point. Eventually, however, they reconcile, with Spike acknowledging that he never really had anything against the Anarchist, and it was all talk to make him look good on camera.

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