Repulsor rays at the ready, the armoured Avenger is back...

(Panini Books)

With the nastiness of the short-lived Superior Iron Man story arc relegated to the dusty cupboard reserved for previous Stark failures like Teen Tony and Director of SHIELD, it’s time for a new era of armoured adventuring under a fresh creative team.

His former lover Whitney Frost, aka Madame Masque, is stockpiling mystical artefacts looted from around the globe, former armoured foe Victor Von Doom has apparently turned over a new leaf to coincide with the restoration of his face, and Doctor Strange isn’t answering his calls… It’s just another typical day for Tony Stark.

Writer Brian Michael Bendis has written Stark before in his Avengers series, so he has a decent handle on the futurist inventor’s character and idiosyncrasies, but he does allow himself to fall back on his familiar trope of using extended dialogue sequences at the expense of plot development.

Ultimately not a lot really happens here, and one would hope that Bendis is merely setting pieces in play ready for his long-term game plan, but having followed the writer since the start of his Avengers run there are alarm bells ringing already about where he’s going on the storytelling front.

Doom’s involvement in proceedings is to be welcomed, but his restored face seems to have brought about a change in speech patterns, as Victor does not talk like any iteration of the character encountered before, and also appears to have mellowed in his old age.

An acceptable start to the new run, but Bendis needs to step up a gear if he’s going to join the ranks of Iron Man luminaries like David Michelinie, Matt Fraction, Kurt Busiek and Kieron Gillen.