Does Ironheart Suck? [Riri Williams]

Comments · 2.1K

• AN

  @annemorganna8312 · 3 years ago

  “Bendis completely dropped the ball he set up for himself.”<br><br>This is the best way to describe most of Bendis’s writing and characters. I’ll never forget when he made a statement defending his choice to kill Rhodes and Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an essay arguing that defense and handed it to Bendis.

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• RO

  @ronitanis4353 · 3 years ago

  What really got me rolling my eyes was the issue when Riri said Pepper was responsible for EVERY good thing Tony ever did!

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• VI

  @violet_agate4837 · 3 years ago

  I think Riri is a good example how &quot;mid&quot; is usually worse than &quot;bad&quot;.

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• TE

  @TedTrembinski · 3 years ago

  It&apos;s really clear that you really WANT to love comics! I appreciate you keep taking risks in contributing to the discourse, even when you&apos;re not feeling something - your tone and encouragement for us to go read comics and form our own opinions is something that keeps me coming back to your videos. Thanks for the thoughts and see you in the next one!

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• KE

  @kevinodonnell4094 · 3 years ago

  I think my main qualm with Riri (aside from her haphazardly taking over the book of my favorite superhero when there were still loose threads in Tony&apos;s ongoing story) is that we see (well, actually hear about) how smart and capable she is, while also seeing her character flaws, but she never has a true &quot;save the cat&quot; moment. There&apos;s nothing that shows the character&apos;s true motivation or why we should cheer for her, in light of her over-the-top technical knowledge at 15 or her cold narcissism. This isn&apos;t just a Riri problem, but a problem with most heroes introduced in comics from the past twenty or more years. It&apos;s either &quot;wow, look at their cool powers or knowledge&quot;, or &quot;hey, this character is so flawed&quot;, or &quot;look how dark and gritty this is&quot;, without giving us a look at the heart of the character. This is one reason why I&apos;ve always loved Iron Man - despite the ego, the sarcasm, the avoidant personality, the trauma responses, the drinking, the recklessness, or any of his other flaws, we see the man with a literal broken heart inside, a man who wants to make the world a better place, and fight injustice. Dare I say it, but you hit the nail on the head when you said about how Bendis&apos; characters are better when he isn&apos;t writing them, and this is entirely why. Remember how I mentioned a &quot;save the cat&quot; moment? Maybe Bendis needs to read Blake Snyder&apos;s book of the same title, so he can figure out how to make actual sympathetic characters.

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• SO

  @southparkking2 · 3 years ago (edited)

  Honestly this vid just proves my point that sadly my buddy doesn&apos;t get: it truly is the plot and the world drawn around the characters more then the characters themselves that are the writing issue sometime. Characters always are going to show their best or worse traits depending on the plot written for them and when we realize it isn&apos;t just character but plotting we should be asking for, then hopefully more opportunities to make proper diversity will be possible. And if it leads to less boring missteps like Riri went through in her early run, will be better focus for criticism in the long run.

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• KA

  @KainGerc · 3 years ago

  After Bendis stopped writing her (dear lord does he suck nowadays) I actually found that she became more interesting than most of the other younger newer heroes.<br>Because of the various trauma in her past (which they may have overdid a little in my opinion, having her lose multiple family members and friends) she actually became kind of anti social and withdrawn, which made her stand out from the rest of the Champions by giving her unique character flaws.

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• SQ

  @squidboitoys · 2 years ago

  It’s funny how Dr. Doom became Iron man in the comics and now in the MCU Iron Man becomes Dr. Doom.

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• JU

  @Jus_Saiyan · 1 year ago

  This is what fair criticism looks like!

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• KJ

  @Kjleed13 · 3 years ago

  I just got big SpyKids vibs from her. Nothing felt earned. Tony and Shuri had the best access to wealth, education and resources available to them as children, so it makes sense they were ahead in the field.

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• AI

  @aidanshea5942 · 3 years ago

  I&apos;m not a writer, and I understand the comics industry is really complicated but wouldn&apos;t it have been more interesting for Riri to stick with the &quot;bad armor&quot; for a while and have her make gradual but meaningful improvements to it over time and having her be clever in how she overcomes challenges instead of just having Tony come in and help after one semi-successful mission?<br><br>It kind of inadvertently sends the message to young black readers that &quot;if at first you don&apos;t succeed, hope a white, billionaire will help you&quot;?

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• CA

  @caleb_clay313 · 3 years ago

  After I found about her re-writes from different authors, I for one do like RiRi Williams a lot more than I did before, and I&apos;m really happy that she&apos;s finally been given the chance to fully become her own character. <br><br>Also, as a black guy &amp; someone who loves creating original characters, I just felt like Bendis&apos;s version of Riri lacked any character substance beyond the surface-level struggles that have been stereotypically given to so many other black characters throughout all of media in times past and present (the murder of Riri&apos;s father was the first example that came to my mind).

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