Saturday Night Showcase> Marvel Rising: A Better Ironheart Introduction

Riri Williams. Brian Michael Bendis created her as a tribute to his daughter the same way Miles Morales was created for his daughter. (He’s white, they’re adopted, otherwise nobody cares. They’re his kids. Deal with it!) Unfortunately his son got the lucky break. Miles was created in an alternate universe and wasn’t going to replace Peter Parker. Riri was also a victim of timing, the “woke DEI” era started around the time she debuted, and trying to use her to replace Tony “Iron Man” Stark was…not well received. It doesn’t help that her origin and backstory were ignored, a potential “core wound” was ignored, and her personality…well, to describe it requires language I usually avoid. Let’s just say nobody really liked her if they actually read comics.

Sadly this was the time Marvel Studios decided to get something right about the character for the first time since Captain Marvel at least. Ironheart’s Disney Plus series made her self-serving. obnoxious, and just plain unlikable as she came off more like a villain than a hero. Again, this what writers past Bendis did with her, not that what he did helped win people over. Basically, while Spider-Miles is well received when they aren’t trying to convince us he’s just Black Spider-Man instead of forming his own identity, Iron Riri is not. Could someone do the character better?

Marvel Rising is a series of specials from Disney XD that tried to bring the younger, more diverse new characters together along with Lockjaw of the Inhumans and Pet Avengers, but said “how do we make these super DEI hires into good characters instead of stereotype stand-ins for [insert race/gender group here]”. I talked about the show when it first came out, reworking “Spider-Gwen’s” origin and giving her the name Ghost-Spider, which has stuck in comics and further interpretations. I happened to see some clips of Riri in action in the story “Heart Of Iron”, the second “official” special (the Disney Fandom wiki doesn’t refer to the first two as specials). By this point the Secret Warriors are formed saved for Riri, who debuts here, but are still green as heroes and a team. Led by Quake, a SHIELD agent Johnson, the team consists of Ghost-Spider and her new origin, Ms. Marvel (of course), some guy named Dante who goes by Inferno, a less ugly version of the body positive redesign of Squirrel Girl (squirrels aren’t overweight and neither was she when she debuted in comics), America Chavez, and Patriot.

In this story Riri is actually affected by her stepfather’s death (a car accident instead of a drive-by shooting because kids show), and though Natalie is still alive she’ll be out of her life soon as Riri wants to build a suit not for the glory but because she wants to help people and has to create her own superpower, not forcing her teacher to tell her what she can’t be because she misunderstood a quote about what drove Sally Ride to become an astronaut. She’s actually someone you can feel sorry for as she undergoes an actual character arc. Meanwhile, Quake is having a crisis of faith in herself after a battle with Hala, a Kree warrior seeking the power to go home and destroy the planet. Without Captain Marvel, do our heroes stand a chance? Can Riri Williams actually be a GOOD character (in more ways than one)? Find out and enjoy.

I shouldn’t have slept on this one. I’m going to have to check through the channel and catch the rest of this series. If they can fix Riri, this might actually be a good show. Once again cartoons make the live-action stuff Marvel Studios puts out now look worse in comparison. That’s why I like my superhero shows animated.