Invincible Iron Man: Ironheart, Vol. 2: Choices (2018)

I’m still not wholly sold on Ironheart, but this volume does have some interesting things going on to recommend it. I liked it better than volume 1 and am interested to see what follows.

After the events of the last volume, Riri found herself making quite the splash. All of the sudden, she’s being variously courted by Stark Industries, the Champions (essentially, teenage Avengers,) M.I.T., and S.H.I.E.L.D., all while she’s still getting the hang of her own suit and trying to figure out what kind of hero she’s going to be. When S.H.I.E.L.D. discovers a crisis in Latveria that can’t be handled through official channels, Riri is nudged in that direction, but her approach to the situation isn’t what anyone bargained for.

One of my favorite things about this volume is that it shows the difficulties of Riri’s successes. I feel like, early on, all superhero stories have those moments where the hero realizes just how deep they’ve gotten (and that seems to go double with the teen superheroes,) but those themes often come about when we see them fail: going up against a baddie they’re not prepared for and narrowly escaping with their life, almost getting a bunch of civilians killed through their mistakes. We see them pick themselves up and learn to keep going. In Riri’s case, though, it’s her very success that overwhelms her. It’s in the way we see her struggling to even deal with all the incredible offers coming her way, let alone choose between them, and we see it too in how the situation in Latveria gets away from her, even as she’s winning.

The volume also features some interesting developments with the Tony Stark A.I. – specifically, the way that he (a digital preservation of a human consciousness) is different from F.R.I.D.A.Y. (a genuine artificial intelligence.) It’s an intriguing distinction, and as the characters begin to understand just how crucial that distinction is, it’s clearly paving the way for more to come.

On the whole, though, I do think there’s a little too much Tony here (both the Tony A.I. and reminiscences about the real Tony.) I get that, at this point, the comic still has Iron Man in the title, but he does overwhelm the focus at times, taking away from Riri to an extent. Here, we have several sequences featuring profound insights into Tony, but we still haven’t dug that far into who Riri is. Plus, constantly having the A.I. in her ear while she’s fighting feels a little diminishing too, similar to Peter’s Stark suit in Spider-Man: Homecoming. While it maybe makes sense for Tony to go overboard in getting involved with these young heroes’ exploits, it also forces them to share a portion of their victories with him. There’s a slight sense that, they succeed with him but they fall on their own. I do enjoy the Tony A.I., but I hope we also start to see more of Riri as a hero apart from him.

I understand that, with the next volume, writing duties were handed over to Eve Ewing, a Black female writer, and that a number of critiques of Riri’s characterization were smoothed out after that. So even though my reaction has been mixed so far, I do looking forward to reading more Ironheart.