Be sure to include lots of in-jokes to other comic books. And for the love of god, make them specific enough that you'd have to be an honest-to-goodness comic geek who's read comic books since the 1980s to really get them.
Didn't JW do this with the series? Dark Willow was supposed to be Dark Phoenix, and Xander was Scott who-ever; I wondered why rip off another storyline like that. The line between "homage" and "rip-off" can be very thin sometimes but it can be done. The show itself managed it, more than once. But I don't read comics anyway, so I only knew about the rip-off from reading other fans comments, so it meant nothing to be anyway. Any clever in-jokes he meant to insert in that storyline were lost on me, and I suspect on large portions of the audience.
One of the things that bothered me about S6-7, actually, was the increasing number of "obscure" cultural references, mostly from the Trio and then later Andrew. At first it seemed like a mockery of a certain type of fan, but then when Andrew was given more and more importance in S7 (it seemed very important that he be given a specific redemption arc), and the references continue to pile up, I started to resent it as a viewer, as if the show was being taken away from me. And it way - the comics have demonstrated that very clearly. And here I was, thinking this was my treehouse, too.
no subject
Didn't JW do this with the series? Dark Willow was supposed to be Dark Phoenix, and Xander was Scott who-ever; I wondered why rip off another storyline like that. The line between "homage" and "rip-off" can be very thin sometimes but it can be done. The show itself managed it, more than once. But I don't read comics anyway, so I only knew about the rip-off from reading other fans comments, so it meant nothing to be anyway. Any clever in-jokes he meant to insert in that storyline were lost on me, and I suspect on large portions of the audience.
One of the things that bothered me about S6-7, actually, was the increasing number of "obscure" cultural references, mostly from the Trio and then later Andrew. At first it seemed like a mockery of a certain type of fan, but then when Andrew was given more and more importance in S7 (it seemed very important that he be given a specific redemption arc), and the references continue to pile up, I started to resent it as a viewer, as if the show was being taken away from me. And it way - the comics have demonstrated that very clearly. And here I was, thinking this was my treehouse, too.