2 out of 5

…The character had just run its course by now, or at least within the confines of what Garth seemed willing to do under a DC banner.

Packing in a boatload of issues – 13 – and a surprising number of storylines, the ‘For Tomorrow’ trade has Tommy and crew repeating a lot of what’s come before, but a lot less effectively.  The send-offs for some characters – the title story, and concluding ‘The Old Dog’ – lack the emotional punch of some of the previous, more serious arcs, and in the case of the latter, feels almost lazy when delivering its final blows as an afterthought.  Driving that home is a ‘fifty years later’ flash forward that feels like a back-pedal attempt at reminding us that some serious shit has happened.  “Look!  Remember what we did?” it yells, which is sort of what the Hitman series became a few issues back already.

The combo of McCrea and Leach has also loosened up undesirably, Leach no longer hemming in John’s pencils to a grittier vibe.  Sure, it allows for more of that McCrea personality in the designs, but the series was at its best when downplaying its excesses, McCrea-ness included.  Carla Feeny’s colors also start to get grossly digital about halfway through.

…And our characterization hits an all time low, with Tiegel written at jocky levels of awareness and disgustingly drawn by John later on, all T & A.  Tommy frets about his relationship when it matters, grouses about brotherhood at others, and men are manly and deliver cold stares at clipped points of wisdom.  The series, in attempting to encompass more adult sensibilities but tempered toward actionry by its DC readership, becomes exactly the kind of dunderheaded display of masculinity Ennis normally picks on.

Every single move here is either done better by Garth in another series or earlier on in Hitman itself.  My overt negativity here is due to reading it in one sitting, which allows this repetitiveness to really stack up on itself, but taken an issue at a time its certainly tolerable, with flashes of charm in there that remind us what so briefly made this series really promising.