Sociologist and author Eve L. Ewing said writing Ironheart for Marvel "seemed to me to be about the least political thing I had ever done," but the assignment swiftly drew attacks.
"My Twitter notifications were a garbage fire. They said I had no talent, that I was a harbinger of everything that was going wrong in the comics industry. Some of them used coded language like 'forced diversity.' Other messages, like a simple image of a burning cross, were more direct," Ewing wrote for The New York Times in its Race/Related newsletter.
Ironheart follows the adventures of Riri Williams, a Black teenage girl super-genius who takes over the mantle of Iron Man, but in her own way. The character, created by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato, was introduced in Invincible Iron Man #7 in May 2016.
"At the time I was hired, I was the fifth Black woman writer in Marvel’s nearly 80-year history," Ewing noted. However, she didn't understand the angry reaction to her writing comics, which was more vehement than her nonfiction work about social justice. She described discussing the assignment with The Atlantic essayist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wrote for Black Panther and Captain America. Coates told her she would be seen as a threat.
Ewing added that she thinks of the work as being "fun" above all else, but important, too. "It's not only that if little Black girls see Ironheart being brave, they will understand that they can do the same because they look like her. It's that superheroes serve as a shared cultural mirror, paragons of what bravery even is," she explained.
Source: The New York Times