From my childhood, in advance of one of the Superman reboots in the 80's, I remember a particular issue where they'd rounded up several artists to each do their take on the "end" of the previous continuity, or the a version of the origin story. It didn't matter that they did not fit into a single coherent canon.
If anything causes it to be a trainwreck, it is that they try to maintain the idea that there's any kind of coherence.
I like that there's different takes on the characters.
Just look at what happened to the Star Wars extended universe - and that with a much tighter creative control.
I recommend comics about competitive wine tasting.
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_(comics)
2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalped_(comics)
3: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Sept_Vies_de_l%27%C3%89perv...
Unfortunately, you can't see any of that from the cover of the comics, and the best writers share shelf space with a whole lot of dreck, as well as a bunch of not-dreck that assumes you've already been reading the series for ten years.
My advice is to buy collected story arcs rather than individual issues, avoid crossovers, favor single-character rather than ensemble books, favor series relaunches or miniseries, and once you've found a writer you like, buy for the writer and not the character.