Review: Ironheart
We're blurring the boundaries again. Yes, Marvel's Ironheart is a superhero but she's in the category of the technologically enhanced crime fighter, which puts this soundly on the sci-fi side of the line.
Riri Williams is a young genius from Chicago with her own lab at MIT. Her father, stepfather and childhood friend were shot and killed in her home city, so what's a girl to do? Well this one decided to reverse-engineer Tony Stark's famous suit and take to the skies on her own crusade against villainy.
The design is similar to Iron Man but sleeker and with a different colour scheme, which includes a very post-feminist pink. Things aren't so straightforward, of course, Riri has to balance her technological and heroic hobbies with the complications of the real world; MIT showing her off to VIPs and treating her lab like a showpiece, her past trauma overshadowing her present and threatening her ability to form relationships... Is she using her nerdy obsessions as a way to escape dealing with reality?
Her back story is a bit Peter Parker and Marvel fans will be on very familiar turf, but the more diverse elements give it an extra dimension. There is an authentic edge here and there; she doesn't only battle superbaddies, she also takes time to tangle with more mundane street criminals. Their asses are in equal need of kicking, after all.
There is also the element of ambiguity as Riri questions her own motives. Does she not deserve more than to be treated like a curiosity? Is she risking her life to live up to her stepdad's ideals.... and is that a bad thing? The choice of the word 'heart' starts to take on more significance the further you progress through her story...
It's no surprise to find such deeper issues at play here, Ironheart is written by Eve L Ewing, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. She is a prolific writer and has often commented on issues of race, colorism, education and arts. A native of the Windy City, she knows the background well and published 1919, a collection of poetry related to the Chicago race riot of that year.
Artists Kevin Libranda and Luciano Vecchio provide the expected fireworks and Ironheart's equally teched-up opponents are smoothly rendered. Her own suit is a stylish variation on Stark's, and reclaiming magenta is certainly eye-catching, if not uncontroversial (one bad guy calls her the 'Barbie Dreamhouse' version)...
It's a solid sci-fi superhero tale with a bit more to offer than your standard comic, and certainly not lacking in vibrancy. It is also the beginning of a more complex arc...
Ironheart from Marvel
Zak Webber
Twitter - @sfcomicartist / Instagram - @sfcomicartist
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