Hear ye! Hear ye, Iron Man fans. In the comic books, after the events of Civil War II, Tony Stark is set to step out of the Iron Man suit. His replacement will be *drum roll* Riri Williams, a black woman who reverse engineers one of Stark earliest battle-suits, and that too from her dorm room in MIT, where she enrolled at 15.
That’s right, the new Iron Man won’t be a man.
In an interview with TIME magazine, writer Brian Michael Bendis, said that they’re still working on the name. He also revealed the inspiration behind the character.
One of the things that stuck with me when I was working in Chicago a couple of years ago on a TV show that didn’t end up airing was the amount of chaos and violence. And this story of this brilliant, young woman whose life was marred by tragedy that could have easily ended her life — just random street violence — and went off to college was very inspiring to me. I thought that was the most modern version of a superhero or superheroine story I had ever heard. And I sat with it for awhile until I had the right character and the right place.
This does not mean Tony Stark’s story is over
Bendis also talks about how with Civil War II, the readers are currently in the converging point of not one, not two, but three huge Tony Stark storylines – his best friend just died, his company is failing and he’s trying to figure out who his biological parents are.
Brian Michael Bendis is also the man behind creating the characters of Miles Morales, the half-Black, half-Latino teenager who replaced Peter Parker as Spider-Man, and Jessica Jones, the superhero-turned-private investigator, who’s pretty famous now, thanks to the critically acclaimed Netflix show.
h/t TIME
