The Comic Bug, my local comic shop, will give you a $100 credit if you purchase each of the first issues of The New 52 from DC Comics. I did not plan on purchasing each of the issues but as a writer I thought it would give me good exposure to read different writing styles. My hope was to possible find a few new comic writers whose style appealed to me.

My original idea was to write 52 short reviews, one for each comic, and post those reviews on a comic book review website. However, once I began reading I found that some of the comics genuinely did not appeal to me and I did not feel comfortable writing a bad review of a comic that may not have had me as their target audience. Additionally, comics appeal to me based on the writer, not the character or the artist, so I read for story and the art simply assists the progression of the story.

The solution came to me after I finished reading each of the first 13 issues that went on sale on September 7th – have the comics compete in a NCAA like bracket challenge where I could narrow down which of the 13 was the best comic. I read four comics a day for each of the first three days and one comic on Saturday because I did not want to have the time I spent reading comics affect my judgment of any one comic.

I plan to do these competitions for each of the four weeks in September and each week I will have a comic that was my favorite of the bunch. Only the first issues of The New 52 will be included in this completion and the weekly results will post Sunday of each of the next four weeks. On October 2nd I will have one final read of each of the four winning comics to determine the top first-issue comic of The New 52.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.