Opening a story in media res is a perfectly valid literary device. It allows writers to cut to the heart of their story and immediately introduce its central conflicts in all their glory, without having to devote the initial sections of the story to comparatively uninteresting scenes of set-up. It also allows writers to create a sense of intrigue around past events, keeping certain elements of their backstory secret, which can then be revealed to audiences as the story progresses.

Indeed, there’s an old storytelling axiom that says that the best place to begin a story or a scene is at the latest possible moment. Of course, the story should still be equally effective without the excised elements, and it should still make sense--otherwise, withholding the information from the audience will have a detrimental effect on the story.

Unfortunately, this is the case with “For Tomorrow”, a Superman story in which key plot threads revolve around unseen events that occur before the timeline of the story begins, and which are only revealed at a much later stage--by which point audiences may well have stopped caring about a story that seems to be so intent on frustrating their attempts to fully comprehend it.

Brian Azzarello certainly touches on some interesting themes in this story. He uses Superman’s conversations with Daniel Leone, a priest, to explore the religious connotations and messianic qualities of the Superman character concept. At the same time, the writer acknowledges Superman’s fallibility and his human qualities, whilst also delving into Superman’s feelings of being an outsider to the human race (which he manages to accomplish without making the character seem too self-pitying or self-obsessed). Their exchanges are the most interesting in the book, but unfortunately, the object of these early conversations remains something of a mystery to the reader until later in the story, robbing their discussions of much of their power and meaning.

The information that we are given by Azzarello’s script during the first half of the story suggests that we could be in for quite a thought-provoking and original Superman story. We begin to realise that Superman’s feelings of guilt and vulnerability are tied to a specific event known as “the vanishing,” which saw a million people mysteriously disappear whilst Superman was off-planet. In addition to this, there’s a certain level of political awareness in the writer’s handling of the middle-eastern conflict that plays an important part in the story’s early chapters.

I applaud the attempt to give Superman problems that he can’t solve by simply punching it, but there’s a sense that the story doesn’t make the most of the potential of these ideas. Superman’s discussions of his feelings become slightly repetitive as Azzarello continually revisits his relationship with Father Leone, and there isn’t enough attention paid to the more political elements to make them really stand out--especially when the plot moves into far more fantastical territory in the second half of the story.

When the less grounded elements that underpin Azzarello’s story begin to be incorporated into the book, they come thick and fast, accompanied by a lack of focus that makes it hard to keep track of how they all fit together. There’s a sudden revelation that, at some point in the past, Superman constructed a paradise of his own devising (also building robot replicas of his nearest and dearest to populate it) and then wiped this information from his own memory. Almost simultaneously, we’re informed that he decided to place this paradise in the Phantom Zone, and that it is under threat from General Zod (apparently a very different Zod to the one from the Superman II movie, and the version that appears in Geoff Johns and Richard Donner’s “Last Son” arc). And finally, we learn that Zod was the one behind the Vanishing in the first place.

In amongst all this, there’s also an under-developed middle-eastern female character whose elemental powers make for a good visual and a memorable action sequence, but whose story isn’t fleshed out enough that we really get a sense of its relevance to the larger plot.

Finally, as the story draws to a close, many significant story threads are left dangling and frustratingly unresolved. For example, the mysterious mercenary, Mr. Orr, and his employer’s shadowy, far-reaching organisation remain enigmatic all the way to the end of the story, never receiving any kind of closure or payoff. Additionally, two secondary characters--the cybernetic killing machine Equus and Father Leone--finish the story trapped in an apparently endless fight, rather than actually having their individual stories resolved in any meaningful way. With 12 issues to play with, there isn’t really any excuse for such a rushed and inconclusive ending for these secondary story strands.

However, for many readers the lure of this Absolute edition won’t be Azzarello’s story, but the artwork of Jim Lee. Lee undertook this project immediately after he completed his work on the “Hush” arc of Batman, but anyone expecting a similar experience from this story will be disappointed: this is not a crowd-pleasing guest-star-filled romp through the Superman universe in the way that that book was for the Batman universe.

Having said that, Azzarello provides Lee with the opportunity to stretch his artistic muscles in more ways than one. There’s an exciting outer-space rescue involving Green Lantern that allows Lee to experiment with some outlandish alien designs. (Interestingly, Jeph Loeb commented in the Absolute edition of “Hush” that Lee had wanted to illustrate the modern-day Green Lantern in that story, but didn’t get the chance--so I guess he got his wish here). There are some grittier sequences set in a middle-eastern warzone; some fantastical sequences featuring Zod in all his medieval glory; and Azzarello even makes room for a raft of DC guest stars, with the JLA making a significant appearance at one point in the story and a couple of cameos from Batman that should delight “Hush” fans.

The book’s big action sequences are handled well, with a satisfyingly brutal hand-to-hand smackdown between Superman and Wonder Woman in the fortress of solitude, and a great setpiece involving the four elemental creatures that attack Superman halfway through the story. Also, the religious subtext of the story is captured well by Lee, whose renderings of Superman really seem to give him the stature of a god (especially in the church-set scene of the early issues), even if his designs for the Man of Steel are sometimes so thick-set and chunky that they look a little malformed.

That said, there are some visual elements that don’t work quite so well. Lee goes a little too far with his exaggerated 1990s-esque designs for Equus and the other bio-mechanical killing machines (which are also rather reminiscent of Frank Quitely’s design for the character of Seth in his work on The Authority).

Also, I do have some concerns that the confusing and unclear nature of the story as a whole might be partially due to a breakdown in communication between the writer and artist, as Jim Lee admits the following in his afterword:

“Every issue had dialogue which I realized I could interpret in many different ways: scenes which could be played for high drama or low laughs or both. It was a challenge trying to put across what I thought Brian meant, but I stubbornly refused to call him for his interpretation unless I was hopelessly divided.”

It’s perhaps unsurprising that some of the storytelling is unclear if the writer’s intentions weren’t even apparent to the book’s artist.

As with most of the Absolute editions, quite a few extras are included in this volume. There’s a lengthy introduction (that, tellingly, steers clear of actually talking about the story at hand or extolling its virtues), the aforementioned afterword by Jim Lee, and an extensive gallery of pinups, sketches, character designs, step-by-step breakdowns, alternate covers and promotional pieces, all of which is sure to satisfy lovers of Jim Lee’s art.

Ultimately, though, Lee’s flashy artwork can’t disguise the story’s inherent weaknesses. For the first half of the story, we simply aren’t given a reason to care about what’s happening--and by the time we begin to figure it all out, the story is coming to its messy and unsatisfying end. I found this to be a frustrating read in a collected edition, so I can’t imagine how it must have felt for those reading the entire 12-part story in monthly installments.

Perhaps the book is designed to be more easily comprehended on a second read, as certain elements of the story’s earlier chapters do become clearer once you’ve read the whole thing through once already. However, the book is so unsatisfying and willfully oblique on a first read that many people may struggle to muster the enthusiasm to give it a second look.

If I’d reviewed a regularly-priced TPB collecting this story, I would have perhaps been a little more generous and given it 3 bullets. However, collecting the story in such an elaborate Absolute edition creates expectations of quality that simply aren’t met by “For Tomorrow”, and I can’t honestly say that such an expensive and lavish treatment of this story is worth the money.

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