Iron Man's female counterpart will not be Iron Woman

They could have gone for Iron Woman – or perhaps Iron Maiden – but the creators of Riri Williams, the black woman who is set to don the suit of Iron Man later this year, have revealed that the character will be known as Ironheart.

Williams is a science genius who enrolled in MIT at the age of 15, and who has been shown reverse-engineering for one of the current Iron Man Tony Stark’s suits in her dorm room. She will begin her story in November, in the Marvel comic Invincible Iron Man #1, and the story’s author Brian Michael Bendis has told Wired that she will be known as Ironheart.

“Iron Woman seemed old-fashioned to some,” he told the magazine. “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. Tony first put on the armour to save his heart. Riri puts it on for different reasons altogether, but still heart-related. When people see her story, you’ll be amazed at how simple and brilliant Joe’s suggestion was.”

The series will be drawn by the artist Stefano Caselli. Editor Tom Brevoort told Wired that the new character’s in-armour AI would be based on former incumbent Tony Stark’s personality. “Regardless of where he might be physically, he’ll be soaring along with her spiritually,” said Brevoort.

Bendis, who has also written the story of the mixed-race Spider-Man Miles Morales taking over from Peter Parker, has previously told Time that “when you’re introducing new characters, you’re always going to have people getting paranoid about us ruining their childhood”.

“Some of the comments online, I don’t think people even realise how racist they sound. I’m not saying if you criticise 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 realise over time that that’s not the most progressive thinking,” said Bendis.

Pointing to the creation of Muslim superhero Kamala Khan, and the new female Thor, Bendis told Time that “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,” he said.