For Tomorrow

The Superman books get new creative teams this month, but the standout would be former Image Comics founder Jim Lee, fresh off the year-long saga, Batman: Hush.  DC was clearly trying to duplicate that huge success with another year-long Jim Lee run on Superman.  Instead of Jeph Loeb, however, Jim Lee was paired with writer Brian Azzarello, who had penned the underwhelming story arc that had immediately followed Hush, Broken City.  It was clear from the first issue that For Tomorrow would pale in comparison to Hush.

Superman #204

Superman goes to a church in Metropolis and meets Father Daniel Leone, where he brings the reader up to speed with a confession to the priest.  It turns out a year has has passed since Superman had briefly gone a million miles into space to help Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, but when Superman returned to Earth a million people had mysteriously vanished, included his wife.

The format of the next year of For Tomorrow will follow this same boring structure, with Superman periodically returning to Father Leone for more expository confessions to fill in the gaps of the last year.  Perhaps it was a creative narrative device, but nobody wanted to see Superman going to church and confessing his sins.  Like most stories that recap a missing period of time, Azzarello does it because the lost year really wasn't that interesting.  This story wouldn't have been sustainable if it had unfolded in real time, and it isn't important enough to be referenced anywhere again.  Jim Lee's art seems wasted here, he's suited for more action-oriented superhero stories where characters are differentiated by their costumes and body language.  His male characters all have the exact same face so the conversation between Superman and Father Leone just looks like Superman talking to himself.  Lee's talents weren't really suited for dialogue-driven drama that relied on facial expression, and his artistic limitations contribute to the overall incoherence of this story as it became more complicated.

Action Comics #814

Clark Kent returns to the Daily Planet but there's some confusion about who is assigned to his cubicle, so he's told to talk to Perry White.  While he waits patiently outside Perry's office, he occasionally steps out to change into Superman.  On one of these occasions, a Boom Tube opens in Metropolis and Darkseid's son, Kalibak, leads a team of Parademons on a mission to find someone.  Superman knocks out Kalibak, but another Boom Tube opens and Darksied himself steps through.  Darkseid warns Superman that his scientists had given their prisoner Doomsday intellect, and now an intelligent Doomsday has escaped to Earth hunting for the Man of Steel.  Back at the Daily Planet, Lois asks Perry if he's let Clark know that he was demoted yet.

Writer Chuck Austen had just wrapped up a controversial run on Marvel's X-Men, and had also just completed the Superman: Metropolis maxi-series.  Though he was given free reign over some of the biggest series at the time, including Avengers and JLA, Austen's characterizations were off.  His Superman is annoyingly snarky and even sucker punches Darkseid for no good reason.  Artist Ivan Reis would return to Superman numerous over the years, recently for several years alongside Brian Michael Bendis.

Adventures of Superman #627

Clark Kent is assigned to his new beat, and his first assignment is a ride-along with the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit.  The S.C.U. encounters the villain Replikon on patrol, and Clark conveniently falls out of the helicopter so Superman can fight him.  Some unseen foe seems to be watching their fight, and Replikon is disintigrated by remote control when he's no longer useful.

At the Daily Planet, Lois Lane gets word that U.S. troops are being deployed to invade the fictional country of Umec.  She persuades Perry White to let her go on her own, not embedded in in a combat unit, but he's hesitant to let her take Jimmy Olsen along with her.  This story line was topical as the W. Bush administration had recently invaded Iraq in the real world.

Greg Rucka had already written Batman in Detective Comics and was currently still writing Wonder Woman when he became the writer for the third person of the Trinity.  He would return to all three characters over the years, although during his Action Comics run a few years later Superman wouldn't actually be in the series.

Superman/Batman #9 

Superman and Batman keep the newly arrived Kara Zor-El in the Fortress of Solitude while they examine her ship and debate whether her story is true.  Batman is naturally skeptical, of course, while Superman desperately wants to believe her.  Like her pre-Crisis counterpart, Kara claims her parents made a rocket to send her to Earth like her cousin Kal El, but in this version her family didn't survive on Argo City after Krypton's destruction and she has spotty memories of her childhood.  Batman surmises that Luthor was right when he had claimed the Kryptonite meteor was heading to Earth because of Superman.  Although Luthor couldn't have known it was really because of Kara's spaceship's navigation system brought it here, Batman deduces Darkseid knew this.  On Apokolips, Darksied commands the Female Furies to go find the girl who fell to Earth.  When Clark takes Kara to Metropolis for the first time, they're ambushed by female assailants.  But it turns out to be Harbinger, Artemis, and Wonder Woman who are after Supergirl.

Lois Lane has bought Kara some sexy new street clothes, but there's still no explanation why Kara's parents sent her to Earth completely naked other than it fit Michael Turner's  cheesecake fan service art.  Harbinger had been scarcely seen in the 20 years since Crisis on Infinite Earths when the original Kara died, so her sudden reappearance here instantly brought back memories.