Marvel’s new Iron Man is a 15-year-old black girl

'I thought that was the most modern version of a superhero or superheroine story I had ever heard'

(Marvel)

Tony Stark is hanging up his Iron Man suit, but it will be quickly donned by a new hero, a 15-year-old black girl named Riri Williams. And that’s canon.

‘Riri is a science genius who enrolls in MIT at the age of 15,’ Time, which got the scoop, reports. ‘She comes to the attention of Tony when she builds her own Iron Man suit in her dorm.’

The handover will come at the end of Marvel’s comic book event series Civil War II, and was made with TV in mind.

“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,” Marvel writer Michael Bendis told Time. “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.”

Bendis is also the man behind Jessica Jones, and there's every chance the new Iron Man (Iron Woman? The superhero doesn’t yet have a new gender-appropriate name) will follow her in making the leap to the small or big screen, starved as they are for substantial leading roles for black and female actors right now.

The cover of Invincible Iron Man (Pic: Marvel)

As for the reaction to the character so far, Bendis said: “Thankfully because of my involvement in the creation of Miles Morales and Jessica Jones and some other characters, it’s getting the benefit of the doubt from even the most surly fans. There are fans who say, 'Show us the new stuff,' and then there are fans who say, 'Don’t do anything different from when I was a kid.' So when you’re introducing new characters, you’re always going to have people getting paranoid about us ruining their childhood.”

Tony Stark’s storyline is currently coming to an end following the death of a best friend, the collapse of his company and a revelation about his biological parents.

Riri has already been introduced in the comics, but only as an M.I.T student who Tony Stark is vaguely aware of reverse-engineering one of his old suits in her dorm room.

Marvel has been heavily diversifying its superheroes and villains lately, previously introducing a female Thor.

Correction: The headline originally said 'woman', as in 'Iron Woman', as in opposed to 'Iron Man', but has been tweaked to reflect the character's age.