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Originally Posted by ATDrake
52 is rather good in a generally more subtle, low-key way than the usual big events and related tie-in gimmicks.
It doesn't matter if you don't know the characters, since they were mostly less well-known sometimes fan-favourite heroes that the writers gradually built up the introduction to throughout their story threads, so you could go in not knowing anything about them at all, but find out everything important about what made them be who and what they were and how they ended up appealing to a whole bunch of their original fans via their dialogue and actions and the ways they reacted to the situations they got into.
And there were also good bits involving how the "ordinary" people of the DC universe view their big heroes and their absence and how they react to getting "substitutes" (a little less ungrateful than the Marvel-verse folk, who kind of tend to turn on their heroes at the drop of a hat but then forgive them a week later like they all got collective amnesia, but that's kind of the fun of the Marvel-verse, protected by heroes they hate and loathe and want to put into mutant extermination camps unless they were lucky enough to be bitten by radioactive something-or-others instead of being born with their powers).
And in the case of Animal Man, you'll be getting Grant Morrison writing one of his favourites again (and one of his best characters with his classic runs on the old series), so you'll be able to see if you like what he does enough to maybe watch for a sale on the collections some day.
And the story plots still hold up really well, IMHO, with the bonus that if there was a particular thread you weren't all that interested in following, there were still a bunch of other storylines you could read with other characters (instead of just being stuck with the one plot you would hope would pick up and become more interesting). And everything kind of ties together in the end in a way that makes sense (even if they went and changed a bunch of the stuff that was supposed to have been important later). And some of the spin-off stuff from this was kind of important (Booster Gold got his own series for a while because of how popular he became from 52, and the new Batwoman was introduced in it, IIRC).
Mind you, it doesn't serve all that well as an introduction to the Big 3 (or Big 7) heroes of the DC, whom you were wanting to get better acquainted with, but it's a really good look at how the more "middle-class" parts of the DC universe function, IMHO.
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Well, I just purchased 52. I hope you understand it was your fault.
I also got The Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Nights, and Superman: Doomed.
Grant Morrison's Final Crisis and Batman RIP will have to wait. The reviews were mixed and both seemed to be rather convoluted and difficult for someone not familiar with the DC universe.
I hope I made a good choice.