New Iron Man Will be Called Ironheart

Last month, Marvel Comics announced that Tony Stark will be hanging up the Iron Man armor and passing it on to someone else, the 15-year-old science genius Riri Williams. Now, Wired reveals that she’ll be known as Ironheart in the “Invincible Iron Man” comics, from writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Stefano Caselli.

Talking about the Ironheart name, Bendis said: “Iron Woman seemed old fashioned to some. 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 armor 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.”

“We’re in the middle of a very big Tony Stark storyline—actually three storylines converging,” Bendis said previously of the forthcoming torch passing. “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…Tony is also a master at not paying attention to the thing that’s most important and distracting himself with Avengers stuff. How that all shakes out such that Tony is no longer in the armor? You’ll have to wait to find out for the end of Civil War II. But it does create a path or Riri Williams, who Tony will know and will be interacting with very shortly in the comics.”

Are you looking forward to seeing Riri Williams as Ironheart? Let us know in the comments below.