Comic books are big business. Hell, they’re doing so well that they’re giving the things away. The king of the comic business, Marvel, is so flush that they decided that instead of letting big movie studios buy the rights to their stories, they’d expand the movie arm of their operation into a full-fledged studio and just make them on their own. And if anyone doubted the studio’s ability to make that leap, their first effort, Iron Man, should be enough to erase all doubts.

Iron Man might not be the equal of some of the better recent super-hero efforts; it lacks the visual style and razor-sharp writing of a Batman Begins or a Spider-Man 2. But considering the glossy train-wrecks that the majority of films in the genre end up becoming, it’s a deep breath of exhilerating fresh air. Consistently entertaining, with engaging performances, a briskly paced plot, and just enough action to satisfy the 15 year old boys but not so much that anyone else is going to start yawning every time something blows up.

Marvel’s smartest decisions were perhaps the mostly unlikely. First off, casting Robert Downey Jr. in a super-hero role that a dumber studio might have recast as a younger actor, no matter what the source material indicated, was a stroke of brilliance. Tony Stark, the genius at both mechanical engineering and business at the center of Iron Man is, we’ll be honest, kind of a bastard. Downey is perfect for the blend of smug self-confidence and annoying snark the role demands. Yet Downey is also enough of a performer to drill down to the gooey, vulnerable center of the character that only comes out after his near-mortal wounding (at the hands of a weapon he designed) and subsequent capture and torture by a band of terrorists bent on using Stark’s skills to build them a weapon. Stark, of course, instead builds himself the suit that makes him a hero.