A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

GREAT MUPPETY ODIN: As the closest thing to a Whedon aficionado around these parts, i felt somewhat obliged to pick up the first issue of Buffy: The Series: Season 7: The Comic Book (and not just because of the excess of colons!). Note that while I've seen a few episodes here and there from later seasons ("Hush," "Once More With Feeling"), my Buffy knowledge is largely constrained to Season 1 and general summaries of events later on. A few (generally spoiler-free) thoughts:

• Though this is billed as "Season 8," the scope and amount of special effects involved in just this first issue (giant demons! ultra high-tech command center! techno-slayer army!) show that this could never have worked on TV.
• You have to admire the mixture of action and snappy dialogue, where we can have a massive (and exciting) fight sequence side by side with semi-obscure Marvel comics references.
• The political analogy (Buffy and her army of slayers are viewed as a terrorist cell by the U.S. government) is interesting, but I'm worried it could get heavy handed as this progresses.
• I'm undecided as to whether what happens to Dawn in the book is a clever tribute and reversal of one of Buffy's most-loved storylines from Season 2, or a shameless ripoff and repetition of that storyline. (Related--what happened to Willow? Is she busy teaching elementary school in NYC?)
• I'm sure the final page reveal of who this "season" will apparently have as its "Big Bad" was shocking and exciting to those who knew the character well, I had to look her up in Wikipedia to understand, and how did we get there from her first season episode? I'm confused.

Anyone else reading or planning to?