Marvel’s April 2020 announcements include a new solo title for Riri Williams, AKA Ironheart. Since the end of Eve Ewing’s eponymous 2018 series, Ironheart fans have sought the next chapter in her journey. The engineering prodigy has seen massive growth in the past year as she was forced to confront past traumas and proved to herself that, despite being a teenage superhero, childhood tragedy does not define her. In the first installment of a two-issue miniseries, titled 2020 Ironheart #1, the cyberpunk drama of Iron Man 2020 hits home for Riri and threatens to undo all of her progress by tearing her closest friendship apart.

When Ironheart’s best friend died in an accident, the prodigy recreated her as an AI named N.A.T.A.L.I.E. who has served both as Ironheart’s onboard computer and close confidant. However, 2020 has brought about a robot revolution: automatons all over the world have become sentient, and artificially intelligent lifeforms new and old have begun to rebel against their human creators. At the same time, Tony Stark has been pushed out of his role as Iron Man, replaced with his scheming brother Arno. The result is a one-man war waged by the new Iron Man for the cause of continued human supremacy.

All this crashes down on Stark’s former rival and protege in April’s 2020 Ironheart #1, written by Vita Ayala (Morbius, the upcoming Children of the Atom) and Danny Lore (James Bond: 007, with Ayala) and illustrated by David Messina (Catwoman, Star Trek: The Q Conflict). The solicitation (reproduced below) leaves the exact nature of the conflict ambiguous. Will Ironheart be pressed to defend N.A.T.A.L.I.E. from Arno Stark and his crusade against AI in all its forms? Will Williams’ AI assert independence and end a friendship built through programming?

What’s certain is that, regardless of the course that Riri’s upcoming battle takes, she won’t have the help of Tony Stark, her inspiration and one-time rival. There are actually two versions of Tony Stark lurking in the alleys of Iron Man 2020’s present-day dystopia: one is the biological Tony, who is mired in existential angst over the discovery that he’s a construct and the “real” Tony was killed by Captain Marvel; the other is the mysterious AI Tony, whose exact origins are unclear, but who seems to be a backup of the inventor’s mind from some point in his past. In fact, the AI Tony is from his distant past, if his 90s-era mullet is to be taken at face value.

Riri has other allies in the form of the Champions (although they’re going through their own Outlawed issues), but the tone of the solicitation indicates they’re unlikely to make an appearance. This conflict sounds like a deeply personal one: a rift between best friends, the kind that most readers can relate to. Everyone has grown apart from someone close at one point or another… even if it wasn’t because one of them was an organic meat friend, and the other a digital hologram on the opposite sides of a global uprising. Check out the full solicitation details below:

  • 2020 IRONHEART #1 (of 2) Vita Ayala & Danny Lore (W) David Messina (A) Cover by Skan Variant Cover by Junggeun Yoon The Robot Revolution is in full swing, as is the Arno Stark–funded crackdown on artificial intelligence. That means that Riri Williams and N.A.T.A.L.I.E., the A.I. based on Riri’s deceased best friend, are in for a world of trouble. Can they weather the coming storm together, or will 2020 tear them apart?

2020 Ironheart #1 will be available for preorder at your local comics shop before it goes on sale on April 29, 2020.

More: Captain Marvel ISN’T Killing Marvel’s Avengers, After All