The author has no control over the audience experience. An author may intentionally reference outside work, but that doesn't mean the reader will perceive this intent. Also, the reader will compare, contrast, and otherwise contextualize a work using source material outside the author's control.
In a sense, intertextuality strips a text or work of its agency. A book (or poem, painting, piece of music etc.) is not its own, self-contained thing. It does not dictate its own meaning. Instead, the work is given meaning by how it stands historically, and in relation to previous work. A text simply exists, the world at large assigns its meaning.
My book for the "Book Project" portion of this class is about comic books. The comic industry is positively bursting with intertextuality. Most of the characters that are household names today, were created by Jewish writers and artists starting in the 1930's. Born out of a culture in which antisemitism was prevalent, their stories are often about outsiders, be they awkward social misfits like Peter Parker/Spider-Man, or literal aliens, as in the case of Superman. These characters rise above their social standing to become heroes with tremendous power. It's not hard to see the kind of wish fulfillment that went into their origins. One of the definitions of intertextuality is "to intermingle", and clearly, there was a lot of intermingling between fiction and the real world climate of the time period in which these characters were first established.
As for the artists I'm going to cite, I'm using the founding members of Image Comics. Image was a comic publisher in the 90's, created by a bunch of fan-favorite artists who departed from the major publishers in an effort to achieve greater creative freedom (by owning their own creations and retaining publishing rights). These guys built their careers on drawing Batman, Spider-Man and the X-Men. So what did they do when they had complete creative freedom? They made a bunch of pastiches of existing characters, or pretty much directly cribbed from their old gigs:
Todd McFarlane created Spawn, who is basically Spider-Man wearing Batman's cape:
Jim Lee, who was a well known X-Men artist, created "WildC.A.T.S.", who are, essentially, the X-Men in slightly different clothes:
Likewise, Rob Liefeld's "Youngblood" bore a striking resemblance to his previous work on X-Force:
Have you always enjoyed the Hulk, but lamented the fact he just wasn't metal enough? Well, former Hulk artist Dale Keown agrees, and his "Pitt" has got you covered:
"The Fighting American" is fighting for the right to be blatantly plagiarized from Captain America:
"Hey, what if Wonder Woman had, like, a sword or some shit?" And thus, "Glory" was born:
If aliens came to Earth, and without knowing a single thing about our culture were presented with an image of Superman, and an image of "Supreme" they'd immediately think "This one guy stole this other guy's idea! These naked apes are thieves! It's good that we're about to destroy them.":
All jokes aside, I don't think it's pure creative bankruptcy that lead to these "new" characters seeming so redundant. Superman was one of the first costumed superheros. When Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster brought him to life in the 1930's they had no template to follow. They were forging new ground. In the 60-odd ensuing years between the inception of the superhero and the creation of Image comics, the creative choices early comics pioneers made became hallmarks of the genre. Things like capes and masks and tights are now the iconography of the comic book industry. The Image creators were playing with established archetypes, using a common visual language established over decades. They were influenced by and referencing past works, hence, intertextuality.
For my book entry...The X-Men didn't receive their powers like Spider-Man, or develop them through rigorous training like Batman. They are mutants, born with a gene that separates them from the rest of mankind. They are persecuted by society, treated as outsiders. Humanity in the X-Men books is constantly looking to either eradicate these mutants, banish them to some far off location, or find a cure for what is commonly seen as a "disease." For obvious reasons, the gay community has taken to the X-Men as an allegory for homosexuality. Over time, various writers and artists have been consciously approaching the material as a metaphor for homosexuality. I took some photos from Pride parades, and Photoshopped them into X-Men characters, to make the connection explicit.
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