With Avengers: Endgame, Chris Evans had officially ended his tenure as Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That end of an era has gotten Marvel fans nostalgic in a big way, as they remember the path of Evans’ career, and how his persistent work in comic book roles led to his current iconic status.
Most fans think they know Chris Evans’ comic book role off -hand: He was Johnny Storm/Human Torch in the original Fantastic Four movies (2005); he played a smarmy comedic hacker in DC’s adaptation of The Losers comic book (2010), and finally had his big breakout as Steve Rogers / Captain America in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). However, some enterprising fans dug much deeper, and are now positing that Chris Evans has actually played over half a dozen comic book roles, in a total of 18 movies!
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Here’s the breakdown from Reddit user “WhatsThisReferencing“:
- 1 – The Human Torch/Johnny Storm – Character Based off the Fantastic Four Comic Books
Fantastic Four (2005); Fantastic Four and the Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) - 2 – Arnold Bernid “Casey” Jones/Casey Jones – Character Based off the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures and subsequent Animated TV series
TMNT (2007) - 3 – Nick Gant – Featured in a 8-Part Prequel tie-in series to the original movie
Push (2007) - 4 – Jake Jensen – Character based off “The Losers” comic-book run from 2003 – 2006
The Losers (2010) - 5 – Lucas Lee – Character Based off the comic “Scott Pilgrim vs The World”, first featured in Volume 2
Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010) - 6 – Captain America/Steve Rogers – Based of the Marvel Comics character, in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011); The Avengers (2012); Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014); Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015); Ant-Man (2015); Captain America: Civil War (2016); Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017); Avengers: Infinity War (2018); Captain Marvel (2019); Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- 7 – Curtis Everett – Story based off original French Comic Book “Le Transperceneige”
Snowpiercer (2013) - 8 – Loki – Character Based off the Original Comic Boom Series “The Mighty Thor”, in Thor: The Dark World (2013); Avengers: Endgame (2019)
If you didn’t know it before, this should prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt: Chris Evans’ geek cred should never be questioned. The man has put more into getting us into this era of comic book movie dominance than most have (the exception for Djimon Honsou), and certainly made one of the biggest impacts on the genre. Here’s what Evans recently said about the struggle of leaving the role of Captain America behind:
“For the last month of filming I was letting myself go to work every day and be a little overwhelmed and a little nostalgic and grateful. By the last day, I was bawling. I cry pretty easy, but I was definitely bawling… When you’re playing a character for a long time, you start to see the parallels between what the character’s going through and what you’re going through,” he added. “You start to look at your own conflicts and circumstances through the eyes of someone who might handle it better than you would.”
Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel are now in theaters. Spider-Man: Far From Home hits theaters on July 2nd. Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 is slated for release in 2021.
