So the gang's all here! Hyped up for most of the arc this dream team makes an epic appearance! How? With an establishing shot with its name in bold letters of course! The Team Establishing Shot is a process wherein a newly assembled or created team appears in a a big flashy pose with them all together. It's common on covers but also appears on the back page or final shot when the preceding installment has been about the formation of the team. Sometimes little bios or epithets for each of the members will accompany the images.
It comes in many flavors of subtropes:
- "Super Sentai" Stance: When they have a standard "action pose"
- Team Shot: When it's a posed photo or portrait.
- V-Formation Team Shot: A very standard standing-in-a-line setup.
- Jumping At The Screen: All the characters are jumping at the reader.
- Together We Are X: When they introduce themselves first individually and then as a team.
Not to be confused with Avengers Assemble, a film and TV trope for a montage of Establishing Character Moments for each member of a team. May come at the end of an Opening Credits Cast Party.
Examples:
- In Hunter × Hunter, the Thirteen Spiders get this during the YorkNew arc.
- Hao's Followers of Shaman King as seen when falling out of the Patch Plane.
- These get used quite effectively in One Piece. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the Straw Hat Crew bicker, goof-off, or are otherwise consumed with bickering. About once every story arc, however, they pull it together for whatever it is they have to do (typically saving one of their own). Good examples are four of them marching on Arlong Park for Nami, or six of them (including one who was persona non grata, under an assumed identity) standing on a battlement, squaring off with the Cipher Pol No. 9 and declaring war against the whole world to save Nico Robin.
- Moriarty the Patriot opens with one of these on the cover of chapter one.
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- Marvel loves this, as shown in The Mighty Avengers, Illuminati, Cabal, Dark Avengers Dark X-Men, Secret Warriors, Hydra and God Squad all get these during their establishing issues. Most of them have their own '''font'''.
- The Avengers (2012):
- The rotating team shot of Hawkeye, Thor, the Black Widow, Captain America, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk.
- Another one later when Loki opens his eyes and sees the entire team glaring at him.
- Avengers: Age of Ultron has a Call-Back to The Avengers (2012) above, only reversed. As the original starts with the Hulk roaring, followed by the camera panning around the team, the sequel has the camera panning around the team in the middle of a Multi-Mook Melee, finally settling on the Hulk giving one of his signature roars.
- The cover art for X-Men: First Class does this, with the X-Men on the front and Magneto's team on the back.
- Done in the opening cutscene of Final Fantasy Type-0, showing the members of Class Zero preparing to stop the Millitesi invasion. The shot in question is seen in a lot of promotional materials.
- This MS Paint Adventures: Problem Sleuth panel where Ace Dick, Problem Sleuth, and Pickle Inspector get together for the first time. It's a running gag throughout the story; there're two more here and here.
- This takes up most of a guest comic for El Goonish Shive.
