Team ups are a common occurrence in comics. Often there’s a common villain that sees two heroes or groups of heroes having to come together to deal with the threat. Other times, it’s a matter of two heroes meeting each other perhaps for the first time and eventually learning to work together to deal with a shared threat. But there are some more unusual times in comics where the good guys and the bad guys have to find a common ground to deal with threats or challenges that neither could handle on their own. It’s a rare opportunity for the villains to potentially do something good while also seeing the heroes work outside their comfort zone.
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In terms of the Marvel universe, some of these hero/villain team ups have led to some truly unlikely pairings and some deeply moving stories as well. The heroes and villains have come together for everything for personal battles to help loved ones to larger scale fights to save the world itself. They make for great stories — and here are seven of them.
7) Loki and Thor (“The Surtur Saga”)
Despite being brothers, Thor and Loki have long been enemies, but that doesn’t mean the two can’t put their differences aside to prevent the end of the world — literally. In what is now called “The Surtur Saga”, the fire demon Surtur attempted to take over Asgard, which would have in turn caused Ragnarok. With everything on the line — including Asgard and his father, Odin — Loki stepped up and teamed up with Thor to help fight Sutur. The story ended with Loki and Thor being triumphant but at a cost. Surtur was defeated, but Odin sacrificed himself in the process.
This isn’t the only time that Loki and Thor have worked together. The brothers have come together during Siege in which Loki saved his brother and sacrificed himself, and Loki has become more of an anti-hero these days than a genuine villain, but that team up to prevent Ragnarok is an all-time classic.
6) Daredevil and Kingpin (Inferno)
If there is one thing that can bring Daredevil and his greatest enemy Kingpin together it’s their shared love for New York City. When a group of supervillains start to devastate Hell’s Kitchen — and cut the neighborhood off from the rest of the world to keep the heroes from saving the day — it’s up to Daredevil. But he’s not alone. Typhoid Mary helps Daredevil by distracting one of the villains, Rhino, and then Kingpin also gets involved. They are able to take down the villains by working together.
What’s great about this team up is that there is no love lost between Fisk and Daredevil even as they are working to save Hell’s Kitchen. Fisk makes it clear that he’s not really helping Daredevil but he’s simply helping his city. Still, it’s a great example of two foes setting aside their differences to save the day, even if only for a short time.
5) X-Men and Factor Three (X-Men #39)
The X-Men teaming up with some of their foes isn’t that unusual. In fact, a major example of this is the number of times Magneto has been on the side of the X-Men over the years but there is one particular team-up that sticks out as a real “good guys and bad guys” moment and that’s when the X-Men team up with Factor Three to stop a nuclear holocaust.
A new group of mutants called Factor Three pushed the idea of the mutant race becoming the third world power after the U.S. and the Soviet Union (this was the ‘60s, after all) but something sinister was really going on. The group, led by the Mutant Master, really wanted to start a nuclear war and wipe out humanity. The X-Men ended up teaming up with members of Factor Three to attack Mutant Master and stop his plans, thus saving the world from nuclear war.
4) Spider-Man and Venom
Spider-Man and Venom aren’t exactly best friends. Venom showed up, attached to Spider-Man, Peter rejected it, and a feud was begun. However, while the two may not be pals, they do have a shared enemy and that’s the evil Carnage symbiote. There have been a few times in comics where Spider-Man and Venom come together to fight Carnage, but perhaps one of the most notable is the “Maximum Carnage” crossover event that saw Spider-Man team up not only with Venom but a number of other heroes — including Captain America, Black Cat, Iron Fist, and more — to stop Carnage.
There is also Absolute Carnage from 2019 that also sees Spider-Man and Venom teaming up to deal with the return of Cletus Kasady as well as “Venomized” for more Spider-Man and Venom team ups. Like we said, it happens semi-regularly, but it’s always a good time.
3) Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom (Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment)
Sometimes, even the villain needs a little help when it comes to trying to do something noble for someone they love. Doctor Doom and Doctor Strange are two of the most powerful magical figures in Marvel and when Doctor Strange won out in the contest to become Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme, it came with the requirement to help out his competitor — in this case Doom — with a favor. In this case, Doom’s favor was deeply personal. Long before he became Doctor Doom, his mother Cynthia had been damned to Hell. Cynthia had been a sorceress who bartered her own soul to Mephisto in order to have the power to keep her people safe in Latveria. However, she died and her soul was in Mephisto’s hands. Doom tried every year to fight for her soul’s freedom and lost over and over again.
Once Doom realized he needed help, that’s how he ended up being owed a favor by Doctor Strange, but it works. Strange and Doom pull things off with a clever fake out that prompts Cynthia to reveal the goodness within her that frees her and sends her to heaven. Doom is finally able to save his mom, thanks to Doctor Strange. It’s surprisingly sweet, for a Doom story.
2) Thanos, Adam Warlock, and the Avengers (Infinity War)
Was Thanos not the villain of The Infinite Gauntlet event? Yes, yes he was. Did he end up teaming up with his enemies in Infinity War? You better believe it. The nuts and bolts of thing sis that Adam Warlock has an evil side, Magus, and that evil side returned. He started gathering up five Cosmic Cubes and let’s just say it would have gone very badly. So, Thanos teamed up with Adam and the heroes to stop Magus.
Sure, Thanos had some ulterior motives here — it’s Thanos, after all, and that meant that once Magus was stopped, Thanos also had to be stopped but for that one moment, Thanos and the heroes teamed up and saved the day. Comics are weird like that sometimes.
1) Captain America and Red Skull (“Operation: Rebirth”)
Sometimes in order to stop a Nazi, you have to team up with a Nazi, apparently. At least that was the case for Captain America. After losing the super-soldier serum in his blood, Steve Rogers seemingly died except that wasn’t exactly the case. He ended up getting a blood transfusion from Red Skull which brought him back up to his fighting strength, but there was a reason Red Skull did what he did. You see, Red Skull had put Hitler inside a cosmic cube and now, some Neo-Nazis wanted to free him from it. As that would go badly for Red Skull, he needed Captain America’s help to stop Hitler from being freed and taking over the world.
There are a lot of complicated elements to the overall story, and as you can guess, plenty of fallout from Captain America working with Red Skull, but it’s a fascinating example of a hero teaming up with a villain to save the day, especially in a situation that isn’t exactly black and white.
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