"Spitfire and the Troubleshooters" was created for the New Universe line by Eliot R. Brown and Jack Morelli. Brown recalls that it was Morelli who first came up with the idea of doing the series. On "Spitfire"s conception, Brown commented, "It was more than Iron Girl, it was a different technological attitude, more reality-based. Iron Man was not unreal, but Iron Man as a concept did too much. Even in the 1980s, the suit was so smart, it could have gone off and had its own adventures. I tried to do something that was more of a garbage can with legs and a good brain in it, something more mechanical." The concept of the Troubleshooters was based on a series of escapades Brown shared with a childhood friend, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while visiting him at the MIT campus in the mid-1970s.