Actors Who Are Different Characters In Comic Book Film Universes (But Actually Just Marvel)

Comic book companies boast of the large numbers of characters in their universes when trying to sell themselves as franchise opportunities, usually referring to them as assets. With the increase in the number of films based on comic books, and the huge number of actors available to play roles in these films, it’s surprising to see certain actors playing more than their fair share of comic book characters. What adds to the confusion is when the same actor plays two different characters in films adapted from the comic books from the same universe.

With Chris Evans, who had played Johnny Storm aka The Human Torch in two Fantastic Four films, about to reprise his role of Steve Rogers aka Captain America in The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble, if you live in the UK), I decided to compile a specific list: actors who have portrayed separate on-screen characters in different live-action films adapted from comic books in the same universe (as of March 2012). As noted in the title of this blog post, it turned out that all the instances are from films based on Marvel comic books. This is appropriate: Marvel invented the interconnected shared universe in comic books, and they are making a good job of it in the cinema. On with the list.

Chris Evans
Let’s start with my first example: Evans is both Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Steve Rogers in Captain America: The First Avenger, both characters in the Marvel universe. He was very good in both roles; comic book characters are something he enjoys, having played Lucas Lee in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and Jensen in The Losers.

Ryan Reynolds
Reynolds has played a big character in the DC universe, as Hal Jordan in Green Lantern. However, he has also played two different characters in films adapted from Marvel comic books. He was Hannibal King in Blade: Trinity and Wade Wilson aka Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. We still wait to see if he will play Deadpool again in his own film.

John Favreau
Despite making his name for directing Iron Man, Favreau started out as an actor. His first Marvel universe role was as Foggy Nelson in Daredevil, before giving himself the role of Happy Hogan in both Iron Man and Iron Man 2.

Rebecca Romijn
Rebecca Romijn has played Mystique in X-Men, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand (as well as a cameo as ‘older’ Mystique in X-Men: First Class) but she was also Joan in The Punisher (the version from 2004 with Thomas Jane in the titular role).

Ben Foster
Ben Fosters shares with Romijn the accolade of different characters in the same film universe in the same films: he was in The Punisher as Spacker Dave and he was also in X-Men: The Last Stand as Warren Worthington III aka Angel. He is also another actor who enjoys being in comic book adaptations: he was The Stranger in 30 Days of Night.

Ray Stevenson
Keeping the Punisher theme but a different film: Stevenson was Frank Castle aka The Punisher in Punisher: War Zone, but he was also Volstagg in Thor.

Idris Elba
Keeping with Thor, Elba was Heimdall in Thor (which caused a kerfuffle among certain types who couldn’t handle the addition of colour to the casting) and Moreau in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (although I don’t think that particular character was in the original comic books). He is also an actor who likes comic book adaptations: he was Roque in The Losers (alongside Chris Evans, the Marvel universe regular).

Sam Elliott
Keeping the Ghost Rider connection, albeit the first film and not the sequel, Elliott was the Caretaker in Ghost Rider, who is actually a character from the comic books but not the cowboy Ghost Rider of the film. He was also General Thunderbolt Ross in Ang Lee’s Hulk, making excellent use of his moustache.

Donal Logue
Final Ghost Rider connection with Logue, who played Mack in Ghost Rider (although I don’t think Mack was a character from the comic books); he also played Quinn (again, a character who I don’t think was in the comic books) in Blade, the film that started the recent resurgence of comic book films. Logue also had a small role in American Splendour, which is technically based on a comic book.

Stan Lee
Last but not least is Stan Lee – he now has a secondary career appearing in cameos in nearly all the Marvel universe films, although it gets a bit fuzzy on if he’s different characters. He has played Willie Lumpkin in Fantastic Four and as himself in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Surfer, but the majority of the parts played have been of the ‘Man’ variety ('Man with waterhose', 'Hotdog vendor'), so I don’t know how it quite fits into my list. If you want a full list (as of March 2012), you can find them around the web (Empire has a list with images; there is even a YouTube compilation if you want to see them in situ).

That’s the current list as far as I’m aware; if there are any I’ve missed, please let me know. It’s a good thing I didn’t starting doing a list of actors who are characters in different comic book universes, or I could be here all day …

Comic Book Artist: Mike Wieringo

This is one of my semi-regular posts about comic book artists whose work I enjoy, as I look at their work history and post some examples of their work. Today’s post is about a favourite artist who will unfortunately no longer produce any more of his great art.

It was a great shock and loss when Mike Wieringo passed away at the age of 44. He was taken from the world too soon and his delightful art is still missed. Like most people, I first saw his artwork on The Flash in 1993–1994, working with Mark Waid for the first time and very early in his own career. His style was cartoony and perfect for superheroes but like a lot of great art, its simplicity belied great storytelling, excellent facial expressions, dynamic character work and superb craft.

After The Flash, Wieringo drew Robin for a short run and a Rogue mini-series for Marvel (in addition to various other comics, including the Amalgam comic Spider-Boy #1, a combination of Spider-Man and Superboy) before teaming up with Todd Dezago on The Sensational Spider-Man for two years. Even though I haven’t read the issues, I’ve always thought that Wieringo was a particularly appropriate artist for Spider-Man, but then that was the case whenever he drew any title.

The next big project was the delightful Tellos, the fantasy series that he co-created (and co-owned) with Dezago at Image Comics in 1999. His artwork was perfect for the world of magic and pirates and swordplay and talking tigers, and it was a joy to behold. Charming and funny and moving and exciting, it was a great little comic.

After a short run on Adventures of Superman, Wieringo reteamed with Waid for a great run on Fantastic Four. Waid had a great handle on the characters and Wieringo proved again that he was the perfect artist for whatever book he was working on. He got each of the characters perfectly and drew them as if he had always been drawing them. There was an unusual blip during their run: Marvel announced that they were being replaced on the book before fan outcry caused them to reverse the decision, and they announced that Waid and Wieringo would be staying on the book within three days of them being moved off the book. It didn’t stop the quality: this was one of the great runs on Fantastic Four and I thoroughly recommend it.

After the Fantastic Four, Wieringo worked on Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and Stan Lee Meets The Silver Surfer, as well as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, a fun four-issue mini-series written by Jeff Parker. However, he passed away in August 2007 before the completion of a What If? story about the replacement Fantastic Four; Marvel donated his art and the script to the Hero Initiative, who completed the book as a tribute to Wieringo with artwork from a host of great artists. There is also a scholarship in his name, which is also a fitting tribute to a man who was by all accounts a decent human being. His personal website is still kept online, which is where he used to write about his life and would post sketches (lots of sketches – he loved to draw everything and anything, such as Harry Potter or Power Pack or whatever took his fancy; you can spend ages just looking through all the entries, and I could keep posting the sketches), and it’s nice to be able to have continuation of his life and his art. Mike Wieringo, RIP.

Television: final report card for the end of 2011

Another delayed collection of jumbled thoughts on some of the good television programmes I watched in the latter half of 2011 since the previous posts about good television in the first half of 2011 [post 1] [post 2] [post 3].

Doctor Who
The second half of the sixth season of the new Doctor Who saw a general improvement in overall quality compared with the first half; Night Terrors was scary, The Girl Who Waited was emotional, The God Complex was well done and Closing Time was funny (and the chemistry between Matt Smith and James Corden was great). Bookending this second half were the two Steve Moffat episodes, Let’s Kill Hitler and The Wedding of River Song. The wonderful misdirect of the former had some of the funniest moments (my favourite being ‘Well, I was on my way to this gay gypsy Bar Mitzvah for the disabled, when I suddenly thought, "Gosh, the Third Reich's a bit rubbish — I think I'll kill the Führer"’) with Smith and Alex Kingston on terrific form; the only problems I had were the retcon of ‘Mels’, which I thought was a bit of a cheat, and I didn’t buy River’s decision to save the Doctor. The final episode was another rollercoaster, with lots of crazy ideas, and the Doctor cheating death and deciding to go undercover (much like the end of the second series of Sherlock, also brilliant and also written by Moffat), and the other great moment of the series when River tells Amy and Rory that the Doctor isn’t dead, and Amy realises: ‘And I’m his – mother-in-law’ (the reaction on her face is priceless). Then Moffat goes and tops it all with a wonderful Christmas episode that was Christmassy and wonderfully moving, with the ‘humany wumany, happy crying’ at the end of the episode that bought a tear to my eye. I think I might be a Moffat groupie …

Black Mirror
This was a collection of three excellent dramas around the theme of technology changing the way humans interact. The first two were by Charlie Brooker (his wife co-wrote the second) and were brilliant: the first had the hook of ‘the prime minster has to have sex with a pig on live TV to save the people’s princess, while the second was about a world where reality television is the only way out of a society where most people produce power for everyone else by exercising on stationary cycles (it was Network via Charlie Brooker’s own experiences of ranting about the state of the world). The third one wasn’t written by Brooker but was a thoughtful chamber piece about a disintegrating couple in a world where you can access all your memories in high-quality video footage directly from your brain.

The Fades
The Fades was an excellent paranormal drama on BBC3 (although nothing like its stable mate, Being Human) that built its own mythology from scratch and was novel and entertaining and funny. Created and written by Jack Thorne, it involved a lot of elements: ghosts (who are sometimes known as Fades, who still populate the earth), one of whom has discovered that he can become a corporeal zombie by eating human flesh; good guys called angelics who send the ghosts on to their next level if they become problematic; the protagonist Paul, a 17-year-old unpopular school lad, who has dreams of an apocalypse and who discovers that he is an angelic; his best mate, Mac, who provides a handy recap straight to camera at the beginning of each episode and fills the programme with pop culture references (the show is filled with references to films and comic books and geeky dissections of pop culture ephemera; they even mention Alan Moore); the aforementioned end of the world. It was six excellent episodes with engaging characters and a completely new take on the supernatural and it was almost perfect; the only negative has to be [SPOILER WARNING] when the girlfriend is killed by the annoying angelic, which is supposed to be the turning point for the characters but I thought was totally unnecessary and nearly ruined the story. The programme finished but it was obvious that it was setting it up for more stories, but I haven’t heard news on whether it has been recommissioned or not.

Alphas
I was able to catch this on 5* and, although it is not great television, it is enjoyable in its own fashion – basically, X-Men meets CSI – much like Warehouse 13, with which it shares a universe but is not as good. David Straithairn is good as the Professor Xavier character, the leader who shouldn’t go out in the field and who has the same belief (humans and mutants/human and in this case alphas should live in peace) despite the evidence of the government agency his team of alphas work with and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants equivalent, Red Flag, the villainous group of the series. The show does a nice job of portraying different powers and coming up with new twists on familiar powers; it’s a polished piece of entertainment that doesn’t reinvent anything but doesn’t leave you feeling like you’ve wasted your time.

True Blood
I don’t know if I’d call the third season of True Blood good but it does at least have the courage of its convictions and just go for it as a piece of fantasy drama that has a lot of talented people involved. This season was all over the place, with practically every character getting a storyline, separating the two lead characters into separate storylines, and throwing anything and everything at the wall, including werewolves and panther people and Nazi flashbacks and fairies. Completely demented and wildly uneven, but at least you could never predict what was going to happen.

Misfits
Series three of Misfits was always going to feel very different with Robert Sheehan moving on to new things; in replacing Nathan, the series went too far in the gross-out humour and attitude of the new character to compensate, and it lost its balance and focus. The series wants to expand outside the comfort zone, with more people getting powers, but then uses a ridiculous plot contrivance to get the characters back in community service. The resolution of the Alisha/Simon story didn’t work for me, but the time-travelling episode won me over with Kelly meeting Hitler and saying, ‘Why do you have to be such a dick?’ before headbutting him. Priceless. Overall, I thought it was all right but not great.

Fresh Meat
This was the Channel 4 series about six university students (five freshers and a third year) who share a house off campus and it was hilarious. The creators and show runners were Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, who did Peep Show, and it was funny and smart and took me back to my days at university, even though that was 20 years ago. What was excellent about it was that the three female characters were strong, fully realised and not appendages to the male characters. This was rightly commissioned for a second series almost as soon as it aired, because it was a great piece of television that also reflected current events (such as the anti-tuition fees protests in one episode).

Holy Flying Circus
This was an excellent BBC4 dramedy about Monty Python and the controversy surrounding the release of Life of Brian. Entertaining, hilarious, moving, charming and still making a point about using jokes to make a point, it was a delight and filled with meta-jokes about comedy and Monty Python themselves. Written by Tony Roche (In The Loop, The Thick Of It), it had great performances from actors who really looked the part, with special mention for Steve Punt, who is spot on for Eric Idle, Darren Boyd, who was great as John Cleese, Rufus Jones, who was spookily like Terry Jones.

Rev
This second series of the sitcom about the inner city reverend and his wife was perhaps even better and darker and funnier than the first series, which was great to start with. Tom Hollander and Olivia Colman were fantastic and the storylines were thought-provoking and emotional. Excellent stuff.

Finally, a word of warning in case: Life's Too Short, the new sitcom from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and starring Warwick Davis, was dire. I felt so sorry for Davis, who is a likable character but has to spend this series doing his best impression of Gervais in The Office while having to suffer lots of heightist jokes. The best thing about it was the bit where Liam Neeson wants to be a stand-up comedian, but that’s it for 205 minutes of television. In other words, life’s too short to watch this.