I am currently savoring "Watchmen."  There are small but complex hints that the graphic novelists and artist drop for us like bread crumbs in Hansel and Gretel (bad analogy: so the crumbs get eaten by the birds).  With film, if you miss something, you can rewind, but it's a little cumbersome.  I love to return to panels I've perused in order to search for what I may have missed.  Most often I find  I missed A LOT.  When people say, oh, graphic novels are quick reads.  Yes, that's true for some, but many are exhausting and exhaustive reads with no dumbing down.  ("Watchmen" is giving my eyeballs and brain a heavy workout.)  And after the graphic novel has been "finished," it sits on the table, begging to be picked up again so that the details can be scrutinized, searched out, the art appreciated and digested over an extended period of time.  If some school superintendents are disallowing graphic novels as good teaching tools, they miss the point entirely.  Graphic novels train visual acuity.

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