Invincible Iron Man: Ironheart, Vol. 1: Riri Williams

Sadly, I liked the idea of this comic more than the actual finished product. First of all, I've never read any Iron Man comics before so all I know about the character of Tony Stark and the world Iron Man inhabits comes from the movies. That being said, when I heard that Riri Williams was a brilliant black woman that would be taking over the mantle of Iron Man - now renamed Ironheart - I was excited.

Riri herself is a decent character. She actually wants to be a superhero. At times she is flat-out awesome: “I'm really not a fan of sexual identity as a qualifier.” BUT, she's a fifteen year old girl that built a suit of armor in her garage. My mind doesn't quite comprehend that. Someone (a therapist?) tells her parents that she's a ‘super-genius' when she's five years old. All this is part of Riri's character, but...honestly, I was just expecting a college (nineteen-ish) age superhero and this threw me enough that I never quite believed that she was fifteen. (Both because of her actions and other people's reactions to her.)

A big complaint I had, was the constant flashbacks for the first two issues. Ever time I turned a page practically, it was a flashback to five years ago, two years ago, ten years ago, and then the very next page was back to present time. Now, I am a big fan of flashbacks, but I've always thought there was a good way to do them and brief flashbacks in the middle of a fight is not something I like. Two other problems that could have been completely my fault: One, because I've not read the Iron Man comics, I missed Riri's first introduction, an introduction that was alluded to in this volume but never explained because it already happened in another issue. Same with reveals that felt sudden to me. Perhaps they were explained perfectly well in previous issues. But in this one, they felt VERY abrupt. Because of that, I'm not sure this is actually a good place to start reading Iron Man. Finally, don't EVER try reading comics on your kindle. I did with this one because I got a free credit with amazon to get a free comic out of a selection and this is the one I was most interested it. But, trust me, trying to read a comic on a kindle is just terrible. The screen is fussy and takes FOREVER to load and it's just an exercise in frustration. (There's a pretty decent chance I'd have liked this more if I hadn't read it on my kindle and I KNOW I'd have ate least finished it sooner.)