I’ve had
my eye on this one for a while and finally got around to checking out the first
volume on Riri Williams a.k.a. Ironheart. So far, I’m not quite sold – I wanted
to like it more than I did (premise spoilers.)
15-year-old
Riri Williams is a genius. After building her own Iron Man-style armor in the
garage of her Chicago home, she’s sent an unexpected surprise: an A.I.
constructed from the consciousness of the late Tony Stark. With the Tony A.I.
interface in her suit, Riri trains, further developing both her technology and
her skills at using it, as she tries to figure out what kind of hero she wants
to be.
I’ll jump
around a little in this review. First of all, I like a lot of the stuff on the
more traditional Iron Man side of
things. There are some neat things going on at Stark Industries, including Mary
Jane Watson having a prominent role in the company (I think I’m finally
starting to get used to all the character crossovers I find in comic books) and
the F.R.I.D.A.Y. A.I. having a holographic form, and there are some nice scenes
for Pepper/Rescue. The Tony A.I. and the reaction to it is also pretty good – I
love the line, “Tony thinks creating an A.I. that is exactly like him with no
mute button is a gift.”
I also
like the sequences here involving the main baddie. Although Iron Man has made
appearances in some of the other Marvel comics I read, mostly around the Civil War II timeframe, the majority of
the stuff I read involves heroes with powers, and so their villains often
present obstacles that require a superpowered response (with the occasional
tech-heavy assist.) Here, though, it’s not just about Riri punching, flying, or
repulsor-blasting her foes away. Technology is integral to the problem at hand,
and combating it requires Riri to learn how to use her suit effectively and adapt to her opponent’s own tech on
the fly, figuring out how it works and how she can stop it.
Unfortunately,
so far, the part that doesn’t fully work for me is Riri herself. I really like
the concept of her – who doesn’t love the idea of a supergenius teenage
gearhead building flying armor in her garage? – but the execution seems wobbly
so far. She doesn’t quite gel for me as a real person. It feels like the (white
male) writer who created her is leaning into a “Girl Power” narrative but
forgetting the “Black Girl Magic” part. Other than a somewhat-overwritten
“Chicago gang violence” tragedy in her past, we don’t see much evidence of
Riri’s race playing any part in her characterization. Not that I think writers
are inherently incapable of writing protagonists whose identities are very
different than their own, but it feels to me like, here, the work wasn’t done
to ensure that Riri felt true. (I do love her hairstyle, though – the artwork
is on point!)
I’ve
heard that there are some course-corrections on this front later on, so I have
no immediate plans to write off the title. I’d like to read a little more and
see how the character settles in.
Warnings
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