If you were asked to name an actor that you thought had starred as more comic book characters than anybody else, chances are you wouldn’t have picked Chris Evans. Obviously, he’s known for his career-defining decade as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Captain America, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his history with the genre.
Following the recent rumor that the actor has signed on for animated Disney Plus series Marvel’s What If…? to star in an episode that will investigate what could have happened if Steve Rogers became Spider-Man, that brings Evans up to nine film and television appearances involving comic book figures.
Admittedly, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Loki is one of them after he very briefly showed up in Thor: The Dark World in a meta scene featuring Tom Hiddleston’s trickster impersonating the star-spangled Avenger, and another instance is the eight-issue prequel series to Push, a superhero movie not based on any pre-existing source material, but the comic book came first so technically it counts.
That means we can add What If…?, The Dark World and Push to a list that already includes Johnny Storm from Tim Story’s Fantastic Four duology, Casey Jones in the animated TMNT, The Losers‘ Jake Jensen, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World‘s Lucas Lee and Snowpiercer‘s Curtis Everett, which was based on French graphic novel Le Transpercenige, and that’s without even mentioning Captain America at all.
That puts Chris Evans miles ahead of Ryan Reynolds, his closest competitor when it comes to starring as multiple comic book characters after the latter has so far appeared in an episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch back in the 1990s as well as feature films Blade: Trinity, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Green Lantern, R.I.P.D. and a pair of Deadpools.
