Handler using for a db field/column already defined in another handler

I am working on an inline ajax comments views handler module for Drupal 6 (an hopefully Drupal 7).

The idea is add a field to a view that just adds ajax loading of comments and adding new comments via ajax. I actually have the javascript and ajax callbacks all worked out, but I am new to making views handlers.

I want to define a "field" for the node _comments_statistics table's comment count column in my hook_view_data hook , but the problem is it already defined by views module itself. So, when I try to add it in the views UI, I actually get it showing up as
array
Node
Inline Comments

Is there a way around this or a better way to architect my idea ?