Marvel has been actively looking to diversify their heroes in comics, something that was made very clear in All new, All Different Avengers (featuring femme-Thor and Miles Morales as Spider-Man), Spider-Gwen and GwenPool. Now, Marvel has moved to bring us a new Iron Man with Riri Williams.
According to creator and Iron Man writer Brian Michael Bendis in an interview with TIME, Riri Williams is an MIT student who makes herself known to Tony Stark when she reverse-engineers one of his old armors in her dorm alone.
Why a new Iron Man, though? Here's why, according to Bendis:
"We’re in the middle of a very big Tony Stark storyline—actually three storylines converging. His best friend died, his company is collapsing and he’s finding out who his biological parents were all at the same time. That’s stressful for a character who is wired the way Tony is wired and has dependency issues the way Tony does."
Bendis is aware of backlash that a female black Iron Man could and has brought, but thinks that the community will embrace her:
"Some of the comments online, I don’t think people even realize how racist they sound. I’m not saying if you criticize you’re a racist, but if someone writes, “Why do we need Riri Williams we already have Miles?” that’s a weird thing to say. They’re individuals just like Captain America and Cyclops are individuals. All I can do is state my case for the character, and maybe they’ll realize over time that that’s not the most progressive thinking.
But increasingly we see less and less of that. Once Miles hit, and Kamala Khan hit and female Thor hit—there was a part of an audience crawling through the desert looking for an oasis when it came to representation, and now that it’s here, you’ll go online and be greeted with this wave of love.
I think what’s most important is that the character is created in an organic setting. We never had a meeting saying, “we need to create this character.” It’s inspired by the world around me and not seeing that represented enough in popular culture."
Of course, asking about the diversification of Marvel couldn't be limited to one question, so TIME asked again (a total of three questions on the subject out of nine total). Why did it take so long for comics to see female or ethnic characters?
"Talking to any of the older creators, it’s the thing they said they wish they’d done more of—reflecting the world around them. It just wasn’t where the world was at at that time. Now, when you have a young woman come up to you at a signing and say how happy she is to be represented in his universe, you know you’re moving in the right direction."
So, how do you feel about the new Iron Man/Riri Williams?
