Ironheart #1

Marvel Comics

Written by Eve L. Ewing

Art by Kevin Libranda and Luciano Vecchio

Colors by Matt Milla

Letters by Clayton Cowles

Being a young genius is hard. Being a young genius superhero is even harder.

Riri Williams has her head in the clouds, literally. She’s spending more and more time in her Ironheart armor soaring through the skies, thinking about the family and friend that she lost. When she returns to her lab, she finds that the annoyances of the real world are always present.

The dean is showing a group of foreign dignitaries around campus and has decided that Riri’s lab is part of the tour. Trying to be nice, Riri shows them some experimental tech she’s developing before they get shuttled to their conference.

Ignoring the world around her, including friends trying to get her to go out and do simple things like eat, Riri dives back into her work until an alert of a supervillain taking the dignitaries hostage prompts her to act.

Ewing does something rare in comics. Something I appreciated in this instance more than I would have in others. As an audience, we get to see and hear Riri work out both her rescue of the hostages and her fight with Clash. She didn’t barrel into a fight, get knocked around and have to come up with a last ditch effort to save the day. Riri used her intellect and tech to devise and execute a plan that, while risky, did what it was designed to do. Those were great moments to see and read.

If there was one thing that felt off, it was some of the dialogue when Riri was speaking casually with a friend from her neighborhood. The discussion was great, but some of the references seemed a little dated. As a fan of Jay-Z and A Tribe Called Quest, it was hard for me to reconcile a couple of contemporary teenagers talking about their music rather than contemporary artists. Seemed a little dated in my opinion.

The art was excellently detailed and beautiful. Both the action and the character moments looked visually stunning.

Ironheart #1

0.00
9.7

Overall

9.7/10

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