Superman: For Tomorrow volumes 1 & 2 (collecting Superman #204–209 and #210–215) by Brian Azzarello and Jim Lee

I try to be rational and reasoning when talking about books I read, but for this book: WTF? How can these two top-notch creators produce something as bizarre as this? Long dull chats with a priest, ‘real life’ fighting in a Middle Eastern county, people ‘vanishing’ – Azzarello seems on full pretentious mode, which is part of him I haven’t seen from reading 100 Bullets. Although 100 Bullets does have an effect on this: the story has Clark and Lois make love, with the after-monologue from Lois, ‘Incredible. Just as mind-numbingly incredible as the first time.’

As I’ve mentioned before, I really like Jim Lee’s art, a perfect modern-day superhero artist. His Superman is good and it gets better throughout the book, as would be expected from drawing a character continuously for a year; his Batman looks equally good when he appears, having just finished drawing him for a year as well. He does a particularly good J’onn J’onzz, making him look powerful and alive. However, his women don’t seem to come across as well, and his Lois doesn’t feel quite like Lois to me, but I’m not a big Superman reader.

From what I can gather from reading the book and trying not to fall asleep, the Vanishing is Superman’s fault, due to a machine made by his father, which transports people to a dimension of the Phantom Zone, already containing Zod. But this only becomes apparent much later in the series, perhaps even the second volume: it must have been hellish to read this in the monthly format. There is a priest in it, who talks a lot with Superman, and he gets turned into monster by covert ops people after being diagnosed with cancer – why? There are even references to the famous Michaelangelo painting of God and Adam – to quote Superman: ‘What does it mean?’ Not recommended.