Over the past few years we have seen how the comic industry is starting to address the criticisms that it isn’t diverse enough. For example some of the changes Marvel has made was introduce Iceman as a gay character.They also made the new Hulk of Asian-American descent, and they also made Ms. Marvel a Muslim superhero of Pakistani-American heritage.Basically it sounds like Marvel is certainly trying to shake things up and move away from the stereotypical image of what a superhero should look like. The latest change is to Iron Man, who for the longest time ever was pretty much Tony Stark, but now we have a new Iron “Man” in the form of Riri Williams (should it be Iron Woman?).
For readers of the Iron Man comics, Williams isn’t exactly a new character per se. Prior to this, Williams had managed to reverse engineer the Iron Man suit to create one of her own. Speaking to TIME in an interview, the creator of Williams and Iron Man writer Brian Michael Bendis revealed how he came up with the character.
According to Bendis, “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.”
So what do you guys think? Who else is looking forward to seeing what the new Iron Man is capable of?