Marvel's new Iron Man will be called...
By now, every comic book fan (and enraged Internet troll) knows that classic Iron Man Tony Stark will be passing his mantle down to a new hero in the Marvel comics: MIT student Riri Williams. And now we know what her superhero codename will be. Ironheart.
Writer Brian Michael Bendis explained to Wired that Marvel's Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada came up with the moniker.
"Iron Woman seemed old fashioned to some. Iron Maiden looked like a legal nightmare. And Ironheart, coined by Joe Quesada, after I told him my planned story for Riri, speaks not only to the soul of the character but to the Iron Man franchise as a whole."
While she's not the first non-white Iron Man (that was Tony's friend Rhodey) or the first female Iron Man (that was Pepper Potts as Rescue), she does indicate another step forward in Marvel's move towards more representative heroes like Miles Morales' Spider-man, Kamala Khan's Ms Marvel, and Sam Wilson's turn as Captain America.
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Riri won't be officially taking over as Ironheart until November's Invincible Iron Man #1, she has as of this spring reverse-engineered her own suit, met Tony Stark, and stopped some crime.
Aliza Weinberger is an Audience Development Assistant at Mashable and a MashReads contributor. In this capacity, she develops marketing campaigns on Mashable's social accounts and works to grow the company's online presence. She is also a member of the MashReads team and a host of the MashReads podcast. Aliza graduated Northwestern University with a Bachelor's in Film Studies and English Literature and was previously a Social Content Strategist at DDB Worldwide. Aliza is a member of three book clubs and loves watching Netflix and Broadway shows.
