Enemy Mine / Webcomics

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• The Light Warriors of 8-Bit Theater are in a constant state of this. It's stated that the greatest threat to the team is each other.
• Basic Instructions: How to Unite Against a Common Foe
• In Captain SNES: The Game Masta, Golbez agrees to team up with Samus Aran against Eggplant Wizard and the Monkeyspank viral AI, mainly because he knows he doesn't know enough.
• Consolers: Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft fight about everything except their shared hatred of Apple, a threat to their collective business.
• In Drow Tales, after a long and bloody war between the Sharen and Sarghress clans, who have long considered one another to be their Arch-Enemy, Sabbror agrees to turn over all Sharen holdings in exchange for the Sarghress clan's help in getting revenge against the traitors that condemned the Sharen to a Fate Worse than Death.
  • Later, Zala'ess and Quain'tana make a deal to end the war since both sides will only exhaust each other if they continue. When Kharla'ggen unleashes her power on the city to turn everyone into Meat Puppets they also find themselves among the only people not affected and team up to survive. Unfortunately, this triggers a civil war between the Saghress that ends with Quain'tana dead and Snadhya'rune victorious.
  • Three years later, many of the feuding Vals agree that Empress Snadhya'rune has manipulated them far too many times and join with the (desperate) Saghress on a full-frontal assault to the palace.
• The pirates and the Imperial Guard of Dubious Company are forced into this after Izor's Amazing Plan gets screwed and throws everyone into an alternate dimension.
• In Fafnir The Dragon, the far right wing of the Republican Party allies itself with al Qaeda to kill Barack Obama on the day of his inauguration, which sets off the first arc of the series.
• In Girl Genius, we learn of Madwa Corel, an evil Smoke Knight who remained slavishly loyal to Lucrezia, even after the rest of the Smoke Knight order severed all ties to The Other. She and the knights who remained loyal to her are considered a serious enough threat that, according to Violetta, "if there is a chance to take them out, our Smoke Knights have standing orders to set aside all other assignments and rivalries and do it."
  • The Knights of Jove is a vast conspiracy made of several different groups related to the Storm King, to oust Baron Klaus Wulfenbach from power. However, after the two-year timeskip where Klaus "Take-Five Bomb" screwed Mechanicsberg out of time and he vanished, the power vacuum and rise of the Other resulted in total chaos. After two years, Klaus' reign is considered a lost golden age, forty of the fifty-two noble families have been killed and the Knights of Jove are now working toward geting Gil, Klaus' son, back into power to keep Europa from falling apart or succumbing to the Other.
• In Guilded Age, when the beast the cultists let into the world attacks, the Peacemakers and the World's Rebellion champions agree to work together to fight it. Neither side is particularly happy about it, but both agree that the threat to innocent life is too great for them to put their own conflict before stopping it.
• In Homestuck, the Prospitian and Dersite armies briefly unite against Jack before being slaughtered en masse; the survivors are pretty chummy from then on.
• In Kiwi Blitz, when Blitz' kiwi mecha gets impounded, she decides to steal it back. She enlists the help of an earlier foe, a master thief known as The Raccoon.
• Lancer: The Knights of Fenris is a Space Opera set in a World of Funny Animals with a Feudal Future society. While the mammalian species haven't gotten along in the past, they're forced to unite in self-defense against the Drogahri, a race of warlike reptilians who threaten to conquer them all.
• Ménage à 3: The trope is briefly but eloquently demonstrated by Yuki and Sonya in this strip. They can't stand each other, but Angel just made the mistake of challenging Yuki's ego, Sonya's competitiveness, and the woman they both love.
• In The Order of the Stick:
  • Elan and Thog temporarily team up to escape from prison and travel back to the Order after Elan "fast-talk" Thog. Being both Cloudcuckoolanders, they get along surprisingly well.
  • The City-State of Cliffport gives its backing to Gobbotopia's claim to nationhood, since both nations have been attacked by the elves.
  • While Elan sees his father Tarquin as evil and doesn't want his help at first, later when it comes to defeating Nale they rather Agree to Disagree.
    • And promptly subverted when Tarquin allies with Nale. Then Nale double-crosses him, so Tarquin kills him.
  • In the prequel, the appropriately-named Start of Darkness, Right-Eye attempts to ally with human wizard Eugene Greenhilt, despite hating humans, in order to eliminate the threat Big Bad Xykon poses to goblinkind. However, it fails because as Eugene explains, he's now a family man and mentions not wanting to look back on his life wishing he did "petty revenge" (which he ironically ends up doing due to his vows, since he's barred from the afterlife.) Right-Eye actually takes these words to heart and decides to become a family-man himself, even building a village of humans and goblins co-existing, doing a different of Enemy Mine with humanity and full-out graduating into letting go of hate for humans. Too bad Xykon came back...
• Penny and Aggie; during the "Popsicle War" arc, when Meg and Karen and their clique (including Charlotte and Cyndi) executed increasingly cruel stunts against both Penny and Aggie and their respective friends, Penny(whom Aggie had previously seen as a friendly enemy) forged a truce with Aggie to stand against Meg and Karen. This led to Penny and Aggie becoming Fire-Forged Friends (and in later arcs something more...). During the final arc, Aggie wrote a sonnet about her history with Penny, summing up the Popsicle War arc with this stanza:
  "My puzzling ally—pulling me by hand,
  From deep depression's suffocating pool
  She joins my friends to hers, making a band
  Of sunshine fire, to fight the truly cruel."
• In Rusty and Co., Mimic points out the wisdom of this to Yuan-Tiffany, since they don't want to kill each other.
• Posey from The Sanity Circus is trying to get Attley to work with her to stop the other Scarecrows killing Attley for her uselessness. Attley isn't monumentally reluctant to go through with it.
• According to Scandinavia and the World, the only way to get Iran and Iraq to stop fighting each other is to present them with someone they hate more: Denmark and his Muhammed cartoon.
• Schlock Mercenary Defies this with Maxim 29 from The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries: "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less." but the actual trope does come into play at least once. True to the maxim, both sides will invariably race to put their knife in the others' back first.
• During the "Dangerous Days" arc of Sluggy Freelance, the gang's (first) trump card against Hereti Corp is Oasis, who had kidnapped or tried to kill most of them in the past. Only her devotion to Torg and mind control programming kept her somewhat on their side.
  • Also, due to his Sociopathic Hero nature, almost any time Bun-Bun is persuaded to help the other characters has shades of this.
• In Snowflame, Snowflame and his Hero Antagonists have to work together to bail out Arkham Asylum after it is flooded with fear gas.
• Seen in a one-off strip of Something*Positive, in which Jesus and Satan are having brunch together. Jesus is depressed because Anne Rice has announced that she's writing His biography, and Satan spends a Beat Panel in Stunned Silence before offering condolences and asking if there's anything he can do to help. Regardless of their other allegiances, apparently both Heaven and Hell dislike Anne Rice.
• Happens in The Star Seekers with the Dragon Sect and the Dragon Slayer Clan. While neither of both are exactly squeaky-clean and their goals directly oppose eachother, when the alien cat (that turns out to be a Coeurl-like creature in reality) is out to attack them both in order to force two of the protagonists to the outer limits of their powers, they decide to fight this threat together.
• Given the backstabbing and meta-scheming nature of Tower of God, there are naturally many examples of this:
  • After Khun's epic trolling of the other regulars during the Crown Game, every participant there resolves to take out his team first before resuming fighting each other. Except of one of them... which Khun already planned for.
  • After a Mêlée à Trois between Viole, Akraptor, and Kang Horyang seemed to have no end, Akraptor and Horyang decided to team up against Viole. It didn't work.
  • During the end of the Hidden Floor arc, a major one occurs between the the saved data of Jahad and Khun Eduan when they were D-Rank Regulars, against the data of current Jahad in order to save Bam so he can give the current Jahad a real challenge later on. While it doesn't do jack, current Jahad lampshades how unexpected it is.
  • Season Three is basically a massive chain of Enemies Mine, to the point that before the hiatus, almost every single antagonistic force introduced that season, as well as some old ones from last Season, are fighting on the same side!
• Trapped: Chae-ah ends up agreeing to work with Yunsu to kill Haewon, so Yunsu can finally drink the blood he's wanted for years and so Chae-ah can finally get him out of her life.
• In TwoKinds, one of the main character's old friends is a bit biased against Keidran. However, when the rest of their party is incapacitated by an assassin attack, he has to put aside some old grudges.
• Played for Laughs in Gone with the Blastwave when a Red and Blue soldier team up to take down a Yellow tank... accidentally. Neither one realized they weren't both from the same faction until the deed had been done, and unsurprisingly it doesn't end well for the Blue.
• unOrdinary: While they utterly despise each other, Arlo and John do work together when Specter shows up and attacks Sera, whom they both care for and respect.
• The roleplays of White Dark Life have this happen a whole lot:
  • Even before their Heel–Face Turn, Dark Matt and Artemis Astarte (as well as their time-traveling son Damien) fall headlong into the Heel–Face Revolving Door/Wild Card category, fighting alongside or against the Heroes' League and other factions seemingly on a whim. The most notable case is the "A Rare Moment Indeed" roleplay, where Artemis and Damien are allied with the Heroes' League throughout the entire roleplay (even though they're still technically enemies, as shown when Dark Matt opposes the Heroes' League some time later in "Fatty vs. Fairy", which turns out to be the final roleplay before the Astartes officially make their Heel–Face Turn between that roleplay and "And That's Why He Shakes").
  • Bill Stuffner has a strong case of Blue-and-Orange Morality where preserving beauty and art means everything to him, so when he is not trying to transform a woman's life (usually Annie's) into art, he's probably teaming up with the Heroes' League to defend Lucy and Sasha Round (or, after the time-skip, Lucy and Marcus's children, Chevy and Shirley) from the constant attempts of his father Donald, his brother Johnathan, and his stepmother Drawcia's attempts to take the Rounds' lives. In fact, Bill's unique moral code actually places the defense of fellow artists above trying to claim women for his statue collection, so Bill will cease hostilities with the Heroes' League the moment an attempt on Lucy's life is made. The most notable instance is during the "About dang time" roleplay, where Bill doesn't attack the Heroes' League at all^note he's much too focused on assisting in the rebuilding of Westside Island after Johnathan tried to burn the entire thing to the ground in his latest attempt to kill Lucy and is actually somewhat flummoxed by their extreme wariness of him.
  • Mr. Snow, the cryokinetic crime lord and self-styled ruler of Empire City, has two major team-ups with the Heroes' League, both against the Stuffners.
    • The first Enemy Mine is in Mr. Snow's first appearance in the "Devin Bio" roleplay, where he escapes his first skirmish against the Heroes' League to investigate an explosion at the Widelane Theater and ultimately ends up protecting Lucy from Donald, Drawcia, and the Magician while the Heroes' League skirmishes with Dark Matt and makes their own way to the theater; upon their arrival, Mr. Snow continues to help the Heroes' League until Donald and his allies are finally beaten. Once Donald is defeated and evacuated by Drawcia and the Magician is destroyed, Mr. Snow runs off to try to brutally punish Donald, and the alliance collapses as the Heroes' League scrambles to prevent Mr. Snow from taking his anger out on Bill.
    • The second Enemy Mine occurs in the "Sky Bio" roleplay against the whole Stuffner clan, when the Heroes' League is trying to revive and rescue Janine Prower (Tails and Annie's younger daughter) from Bill's latest attempt to acquire her — Luigifan had been trying to just call Winter Snow (Mr. Snow's daughter and a steadfast ally of the Heroes' League), but Mr. Snow answered the call and decided to accompany his daughter to the battle. This time around, the alliance sticks the whole way through with just a few minor hiccups^note though it helps that Mr. Snow had all but agreed to an indefinite cease-fire with the Heroes' League during the "Blindly Fooling Thyself" roleplay upon hearing from Winter about Castiel Synk saving her life and becoming romantically involved with her, and Mr. Snow ends up being the main opponent of the Magician as well as a key player in "Operation Omega Freeze" (Luigifan's plan to decisively defeat the Stuffners).
  • The Heroes' League and League of Villains briefly team up during the "A rare moment indeed" roleplay to rescue Princess Peach from Necrongius. This one falls apart the moment that Necrongius reveals that he never intended to sacrifice Peach to the Lord of Ruin at all, and was simply using her as bait for his real target — Cassandra Belnades.
  • Blake tries to team up with Justin, Lydia, Mordred, and the other heroes against Vaati during the "Flight Formation" roleplay, but nobody trusts Blake in the slightest, and Mordred outright picks a fight with Blake on sight. During the same roleplay, Tori assists the Caliburs in fighting off the Light Demons, despite her absolutely loathing the Caliburs at the time, because she doesn't want anyone else to interfere with her grudge against Mordred (though this one ends up being a mild case of Mêlée à Trois due to Tori attacking Mordred along with the Light Demons).

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