DC Trade Solicitations for June 2013 - Absolute Luthor/Joker, Avoiding Spoilers, Marvel/comiXology, and More Odds and Ends

Not a whole, whole lot to report from DC Comics's June 2013 trade paperback and collections solicitations, but let's look at them anyway; I'm also going to take this opportunity to sound off on some various and sundry items I've been thinking about this week.

• I am not spoiling what's happening in the DC titles now, if there's anyone out there who doesn't know (is there anyone out there who doesn't know?), but I've been struck how DC didn't seem to try at all to keep this secret -- the spoilers were at the top of news articles and in copious places around DC's site. I guess on the business end of things, having lots of press about this event is better than having no press, but I was surprised the extent to which business trumped reading experience this time around.

• Not to sound like a grump, but I hate, hate, hate DC's new update to their company blogs. I especially hate this split between the "Fans" and "Press" blog. "Fan" blog has on it at the moment some praise for Earth 2 and a DC Collectables caption contest -- OK, that's interesting to me. "Press" has on it the first looks at some Bat-family titles and also a post about the Teen Titans Go! cartoon -- also interesting to me. Why would they link the latter wouldn't be interesting to "fans"? Why split things so readers have to go back and forth between the pages to get all the information?

• Couple articles out there suggested some sort of epic badness on comiXology's part in not being prepared for the Marvel free comics onslaught. I can't get that worked up about it. It's not like comiXology has regular server problems (this is the only time I recall hearing about something like this), and even more so than we fans who can't reach our comics when they're down, they can't make money when they're down, so you know comiXology cares about being up even more than you do. Yes, this underlines the issue that when you license digital material, it can be taken away from you at any moment, but this isn't a case where comiXology took something away -- they simply crashed. And now they're back up. And they were nice about it. I have trouble throwing brickbats at that.

• The Star Wars: Clone Wars finale was very good, but I sat through that godforsaken droid arc and they're not even going to finish the show on TV?

And now on to the solicitations ...

• Absolute Luthor/Joker

This is a good use of the Absolute format, in my opinion, pulling together Brian Azzarello's two villain tales with Lee Bermejo. The stories are good one-offs, and thematically related; I may not be running to pick this up myself, but this is the kind of unique, "special" use of the Absolute format that sounds right to me and will certainly look good on someone's shelf out there.

• Camelot 3000 TP

I generally like Mike Barr's work -- I like Batman: Year Two! -- and I've heard about Camelot 3000 for years but never read it. Worth a look?

• Silver Age Teen Titans Archives Vol. 2 HC

I'm pretty surprised to see an Archives back on the list. What's the trade dress for these any more? What DC Comics logo are they using?

• Savage Hawkman Vol. 2: Wanted (not on the June 2013 solicitations list)

This book is coming. I may be the only one excited about a Deathstroke/Hawkman/Green Arrow/Rob Liefeld mash-up, but I am.

• Flash Vol. 2: Rogues Revolution HC
• Justice League Dark Vol. 2: The Books of Magic TP
• Nightwing Vol. 2: Night of The Owls TP
• Supergirl Vol. 2: Girl in The World TP
• Team 7 Vol. 1: Fight Fire With Fire TP

Team 7 will turn out to be a done-in-one series, which is unfortunate because I thought the concept was interesting. I'm glad the same is probably true for Sword and Sorcery, however, because I wasn't as excited about following an Amethyst book long-term, but I'm happy to read a single trade of those issues.

Like I said, not a big month in terms of collections releases, but still some things to talk about. What's on your buying list?