Very few people know about Lila Rhodes. She was created by Ales Kot and Garry Brown, her first appearance was in Iron Patriot #1, a comic book that very few people read or are even aware about.
Here's her Marvel wikia entry:
As most everybody around here knows, Jim Rhodes was infamously 'killed' by Brian Michael Bendis in Civil II: Electric Boogaloo. On a recent interview to CBR, Bendis had this to say about the death of James Rhodes:History:
Lila Rhodes was the niece of James Rhodes, also known as Iron Patriot. She was a prodigy child who helped her uncle with any modification his armor needed.
After a congressman was blackmailed into denouncing Rhodes, Lila recorded a video which went viral in which she defended her uncle.[1] For it, she and Terrence were kidnapped by the same men who were targeting Rhodey.[2] As they were being held in a warehouse, Lila managed to escape and get to a city nearby, where she got hold of a computer and hacked into one of the spare Iron Patriot Armors. The armor was sent to save Terrence, who wore it to prevent his son from being forced to kill the ex-President as his armor was being controlled.
The villain who was controlling Rhodey's armor was defeated, and the murder prevented. However, Terrence sacrificed himself in the process. Lila was present in Terrence's burial, where she talked to Tony Stark, who offered her to train her programming abilities.
Powers and Abilities:
Gifted Intelligence
Trivia:
Lila is a fan of Miss America.
I did wrestle with that, but when we came down to it, the story dictated Rhodey [dies]. But at the same time, I already, regardless of Rhodey, had been down a road with our new character, Riri Williams. I didn't create her to replace Rhodey, but in some karmic way, it does balance. I hope I put something in the toy box that one day might end up being of equal or greater value. I don't know.The only thing that annoys me when people criticize stuff like this is, they think I'm sitting here full of whimsy and arrogance, and Marvel lets me do whatever the Hell I want. They think that I don't answer to anybody. I don't know what kind of job that is. The president answers to people. Who do you think doesn't answer to people? And what kind of whacked out creative relationship would I have with the universe if I was putting myself in a position where you couldn't speak to me? That's not what I want. The reason I signed up with Joe [Quesada] is, he told me my art sucked.
I want people to tell me the truth. Just yesterday, we were arguing about something unrelated to this. As frustrating as it is to be creatively battling with people, I'm so relieved that I have people I can trust to tell me that something doesn't work, or, "That's not the best idea you've ever had." And of course, on a big event I'm being vetted by everybody. Everyone has read this, up and down. It's been discussed from every angle, and I truly listen to good arguments everywhere I can get them.
It seems that Bendis is talking about the whole debacle about him wanting to kill Peter Parker (again) in Civil War II, reported by the NY Daily News here. It's no secret that Marvel seems to understand "big sagas" with killing off their characters. Unlike the acclaimed by the public and the critics Marvel Studios Captain America: Civil War, killing off characters is already a Bendis trope staple: he killed Hawkeye, Vision, Ant Man (Scott Lang) and Jack O Hearts in Avengers Disassembled, turning Scarlet Witch into a villain. He also killed Ares and Sentry in Under Siege, made the Spider-Woman that he had with the New Avengers a Skrull queen all along and killed Wasp in Secret Invasion. He's also the guy who wrote House of M, creator of Miles Morales and now Riri Williams, the character that first appeared in Invincible Iron Man #7 and judging from the "Divided We Stand" teaser and Bendis interview, the 15 year old teenager is getting poised to replace James Rhodes at some capacity with gray armor.
The curious thing is why. Why Marvel Comics is so welcome to Bendis creating new characters to replace previously established ones? Is it for diversity? Or is there something else going on? Jason Aaron made Jane Foster Thor, and she seems popular, with an origin story quite rooted in Marvel's and Thor's mythology. As far as I'm concerned and regardless how much I love how Aaron is writing her, I'd like to see her getting to stick around and that means that inevitably Thor is going to go back to be Thor, but this is another whole thing. My point is why Marvel Comics is always letting Bendis to create new replacement characters to replace previously established ones like Spider-Man and War Machine, instead of creating brand new characters like Mosaic? Why Jim Rhodes needed to die instead of they going with the route the Russo Brothers went with the character, poising him as the first Marvel Studios superhero with a disability? If Jim Rhodes had to die, why Bendis needs to create a character that uses an armor quite similar to his, when he has a super genius niece that could easily take over the mantle? Is this really about creating a new diverse Marvel or just creating new characters so Marvel Studios can eventually get interested if Marvel Comics hype it hard enough? Why?
I say this because as a black man that was once a black kid that had and still has Spider-Man as his favorite character in fiction, as someone that gets sickened to see people spewing racist arguments here on the boards, I need to acknowlege that at least quite a big part of the "diversity" initiative that Marvel Comics is employing on their comics is with pardon of my French, merde. There're some very valueable excessions: Wilson's Ms. Marvel is amazing; Thompson's Silk is a great riff on Spider-Man's mythos completely rooted in the Peter Parker mythology and not an alternate Earth Spidey; Ta-Nehisi Coates Black Panther is brilliant; the whole premise around Mosaic has me very intrigued. But all in all, I feel mostly underwhelmed. While some see Marvel doing something great, I see Marvel selling diversity and using that to justify things that aren't really what me as a Marvel fanboy wanted. I love X-23. Love her, I have loved the character since her Nyx days. But I hate her as Wolverine. It lessens her impact to me, she and old school Death of Superman Superboy are the single cases of a clone of a character done right from the big 2 in my opinion, and yet I can stand her book. Would she be able to carry her own book without the Wolverine name? I sincerely don't know. What I know is that making her Wolverine or anyone else but Wolverine (Logan, not the old man one) is something of a disservice to a character that I really like. Same goes for Sam Wilson. Nick Spencer is writing my favorite Captain America storyline since Ed Brubaker's Cap, and that isn't really Hydra Cap, but his Sam Wilson's storyline. I love that, really bold choices and touching sensitive topics in a way that makes me care about Sam as much as I did with Bucky back when he was Cap, but at the same time what I really would love to see is the Captain America family books expanding to Captain America, Falcon and Winter Soldier, three separate books. With Marvel Studios making them stars, I fail to understand why that isn't possible.