"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Invincible Iron Man: Ironheart, Vol. 1: Riri Williams (2018)


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

Violence (both of the comic-book and more grounded varieties) and thematic elements.

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