It's a good time to be an Iron Man fan.  Less than a week after Jon Faverau and Robert Downey owned the box office (and continue to do so), Matt Fraction and Sal Larocca give us a brand new Iron Man ongoing that's sure to make the old fans satisfied and the new fans interested.

It's clear from the get-go how much the movie is influencing Fraction's direction.  Here, Tony is less the brooding futurist of the last year and more the cinematic genius playboy Downey portrayed, opening up his appearance with a near throwdown with a blonde contessa from Europe.  Despite not really interacting with Rhoadey in years, here the two are best buds once again.  Pepper pops up as the spunky smart Gal Friday running things that we saw last weekend.  Ezekiel Stane seems more the seed of Jeff Bridges than Denny O'Neil.  Iron Man uses his repulsors to direct flight.  Does this hurt the story?  Not at all.  In fact, after a couple years of Civil War, Haunted, and being Marvel's resident punching bag, this was a nice chance of pace from "guilt-ridden fascist" Tony.  It's very pre-Clor Tony, which I'm really grateful for.

The plot is simple enough.  As Tony runs down his five biggest nightmares, (getting drunk and the armor becoming cheap, easy to use, disposable, and out of his hands), Ezekiel Stane goes about demonstrating what a total smartypants he is and then slaughtering an entire room of tobacco businessmen and most likely causing a biomechanical suicide bombing in Africa.  Zeke is kind of an odd mix of the Master, Amadeus Cho, and Jeff Spicoli as a kind of slacker evil genius with an antipathy towards order, Iron Man, and socks. More so than his dad, who was a bit more of a corporate Sun Tzu, Zeke is shaping up to be the anti-Stark, an agent of chaos to combat Tony's order complete with murderous tech and even an anti-Pepper in "Sasha."  At this point, this guy could either become a pretty good villain or another spoiled brat character I'm going to hate.  I'll give Fraction the benefit of the doubt and assume the former, given how good this issue was so far.  And even if it is the 15th or so AIM/HYDRA splinter group, the fight between AGN and Iron Man was nice.

Spliced in with the action is the Tony that's been missing in action in a good long while.  The bits with Jim and Pepper were nice along with the bit with Maria and Dugan (yeah, I know... Skrull... sigh).  The concept of Tony becoming "outdated" is an intriguing one, even if it clashes with the "I'm the man of tomorrow" trip he's been on lately.  I also liked Tony's Armor Map.  That's a very Iron Man thing to do.  It seems Fraction has a very good handle on Tony Stark.  Iron Man is witty, smart, and charming again... it's wonderful!  I really hope the kind of "I'm a futurist so I can do screwed up things even for me but then cry about it for a year" characterization they've thrown Tony in since Civil War #4 came out.  THIS is the Tony Stark I want to see.

This issue was a very good start to a series.  The characterization was spot-on.  The action was nice and well paced (I liked Tony's energy orb things... they looked cool).  The art suited the story well, even if Tony and Zeke's faces changed a bit from scene to scene.  We saw the kind of Tony from the last annual and from Enter the Mandarin now in an ongoing series, which is great.  Hopefully, Matt and Sal can keep up the good work as this was a terrific opening issue.

Just no MODOG, please, Matt.