Comics are changing. Again. October finally brings about the start of finale of Marvel’s seemingly never ending summer event, Secret Wars, and the beginnings of a company-wide reboot. That’s right: every single Marvel comic is being sent straight back to Issue One in a move that is totally not copying what DC did four years ago. This means we get blessed with All-New All-Different Marvel (no seriously, that’s the title they’re going with). While most first issues are coming out at the end of the month, last week saw the release of Marvel’s new flagship title Invincible Iron Man, from the creative team of Brian Michael Bendis (Y:The Last Man, Alias, Ultimate Spider-Man) and David Marquez (Ultimate Spider-Man, All New X-Men).

So, my verdict. What I can say is, it’s readable. I was expecting the worst – a horrible, ill-conceived, Secret Wars-induced nightmare, where Everything Is Different – and was grateful to be pleasantly surprised. Invincible Iron Man #1 is… not terrible. In fact, it might actually be rather good. Bendis is reliable writer, whatever your opinion of him (if you have one, of course), and his comics, though often struggling to be great, normally don’t stray below ‘okay’.

I’ve always been a big fan of the way Bendis writes Tony Stark (check out Avengers Prime for more of it), and here the author really gets to show off. Probably a more familiar characterisation for movie fans than what comic readers have had to deal with for the past few years (Tony was sad and then a super-villain), his Tony Stark is blunt and oblivious and simultaneously incredibly self-deprecating and egotistical – just as you’d want him to be. By throwing in a couple of neat references to Avengers: Age of Ultron, with some interesting new characters as well as some classic villains, Bendis has managed to really capture the essence of Iron Man as a character, just as he’s done previously with Spider-Man and the X-Men.

In terms of illustration, I’m glad to see Marquez as the main artist on a book after milling about on covers and stand-in issues, and the fact that he’s worked with Bendis before is evident in the way the comic moves. There’s plenty of nice double page spreads and some (admittedly rather dull) splash pages, but Marquez’s art is clean and just stylistic enough to make it interesting.

The story itself is rather safe: there’s a date with a beautiful scientist, then a fight with a super-villain; however, I don’t think this banality is necessarily a bad thing. That said, though, it’s debatable whether Bendis desires kudos or condemnation for possibly the most obvious example of a Chekhov’s gun I’ve ever come across in a comic, and while the ‘twist’ at the end of the issue may not be nearly as thrilling to the reader as it was in Bendis’s imagination, there’s certainly enough incentive to read on.

Iron Man #1 is not staggering, it’s not going to win awards or change lives; but Bendis and Marquez have created a fun, readable comic that’s a perfect jumping-on point for new readers. At the very least, it stands out from the obsessive ‘darkness’ of comics of recent years.