Even if you were not at school it is obvious that you are constantly studying. We can always learn from others. The whole thing of some art being 'better' than other art is a route to madness. People will like different stuff and some will like it really simple. I can see that too much detail in a comic page may make it hard to follow.

Musicians use a similar method to you by listening to reference tracks to see how they can improve the sound. It may be that a track works due to how the drums are mixed or the amount of reverb and you can try to match that. Not that I'm an expert in that department.