Marvel announces new Iron Man is a black woman

We know what you're thinking: Iron Man? They're still working on that, but the news is true: The new Iron Man is Riri Williams, a black woman.

TIME revealed that Williams is a science genius who enrolls in MIT at age 15, capturing the attention of Tony Stark when she builds her own Iron Man suit in her dorm. 

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Iron Man writer and creator Brian Michael Bendis spoke to TIME about how he conceptualized the new character:

“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. 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.

As we’ve been slowly and hopefully very organically adding all these new characters to the Marvel Universe, it just seemed that sort of violence inspiring a young hero to rise up and act, and using her science acumen, her natural-born abilities that are still raw but so ahead of where even Tony Stark was at that age, was very exciting to me.”

Marvel has been moving toward a more diverse cast of characters in the past few years, going from zero female-led comics in 2012 to 16 now.

Are you excited for Riri Williams to join the Marvel squad? Who should replace Robert Downey Jr. in the film adaptations? Let us know in the comments.