DC realunched everything with the new 52, so there isn't a lot that you need to know before-hand, my favorites are:
Action Comics (By grant Morrison)
Swamp Thing, Animal Man y Frankestein has a grat saga called Rotworld.
Justice League Dark
Batman Incorporated
The other forms can be hit or miss, I must be forgetting something
The Tall Nerd is right, Marvel is in a pretty good point right now, Marvel is in a really good spot, they are proactively listening to the fans and getting the best writers, like DC they are restarting their books with number ones, and shifting writers.
My best advice for Marvel, DC and such it's kind of tricky, but it has a lot of sense, don't focus in the character focus in the writer, even an Awesome character is gibberish in the hands of a hack. Ill try to make a list of writers, a quick review of their quirks and maybe you find something that you like, I'm going to put some of their works, and take in mind even if I put "superman" that doesn't mean they worked in all the superman books, you should google from what issue to what issue they wrote)
Grant Morrison (Series: Animal Man, The current Action Comics, Justice League, Batman RIP, Final Crisis New X-men): If you like great, amazing, larger than life ideas, in a broken crazy way, grant Morrison is for you, there's a lot of context between lines, schemes and such... I advice you that you get into him until you get used to most characters.
Greg Rucka (Wonder Woman, Punisher, Gotham PD) Focused in the characters and their relationships and well story telling, story, tend to write Strong, female characters.
Kieron Gillen (Journey into mystery) Humor, drama, characters and well, look read his journey into mystery saga, ok?
Brian Michael Bendis (Ultimate Spiderman(the whole thing), the avengers) If you liked the Avengers movie you can thank this guy he made them relevant again. A lot of fun, a lot of characterization. He's going to start writing about the xmen
Jonathan Hickman (fantastic Four) It's like Morrison following great ideas, but more grounded, he's going to start writing the avengers.
Neil Gaiman (Sandman, Whatever happened to the caped crusader), weird great ideas.
Alan Moore (V of Vendetta, Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke) Dark, gritty and lovely written stuff, that molded the 90's )that somehow forgotten the well-written character driven part for the grim and violent one)
Geoff Jhons (green lantern, flash, teen titans, the current justice league) Geoff work it's like someone playing with a box of toys, you can expect a lot of action, twist, characters, but it isn't the deepest sea.
Jeph Loeb (Superman/Batman) Like Geoff there's a lot of fireworks but avoid his work after the death of his son (In other words, don't buy his marvel work) , it sounds cruel but it broke him .
That's the ones at the tip of my tongue, there's several more that has make me actually look for them, even when they arent as famous, Frank Cho, and other works that are more remembered by the comic itself.