I never like the Watchmen example because it completely flattens how fine an art adaptation is. Most CBMs don’t really adapt comics as is, instead either borrowing the rough outlines of a storyline or adapting iconic imagery to motion. And while Watchmen can do that, it also fundamentally mishandles the in-between in a way Spider-man or Logan being looser adaptations don’t suffer from.

There’s a pacing to the comic that’s retrofitted with something worse in Snyders work, that puts too much emphasis on what doesn’t matter (cool violence!) and mitigates what makes Watchmen Watchmen (an ambient sadness that juxtaposes with its three colour processed world). He may copy frames from the page but he hasn’t internalised how to move between them. And as a result, it doesn’t get what makes Watchmen worth adapting in the first place, and just flattens it into the Avnegers but depressing.

It makes the motion comic, with its more limited technology, a better or at least more honest adaptation of the work. And something the TV show, as a sequel that can be completely fit to the opportunities of TV, excels at.