How the TV Show Almost Ruined the Comic for Me

[image description: A pile of single-issue comics spread out to cover the whole frame. Some of the comics look older, perhaps from the 1940s-1960s.]

Though I don’t normally watch a lot of TV, I admit that I’ve been obsessed with The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and The Umbrella Academy, both on Netflix. They were each comics before they were TV shows and in both cases, I watched the TV shows before I realized there were comics.

Since I loved the shows so much, I thought surely I’d love to comics too. But that wasn’t entirely the case.

With both adaptations, the plot lines changed significantly. I expected that since not everything translates well from the page to the screen. So that didn’t bother me. However, there were two major factors that determined how much I enjoyed each comic: 1) how true the character felt to their essential nature? and 2) did the art in the comic reflect the aesthetic of the show?

There’s just one problem… Since I saw the show first, what I think of as the character’s essential nature and the proper aesthetic are both heavily influenced, if not entirely determined by, how things were in the show. Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t un-see it.

I’m usually in the camp of “the book was better,” but both of these comic-inspired shows shook that up. One reason is that because I saw characters of a variety of skin colors in the show, I expected to see that in the comic too, but both comics were far whiter than their shows––which isn’t a good thing. It threw me off trying to figure out who was who early on, especially in The Umbrella Academy comic where you have a bunch of characters introduced at once and they each go by three different names.

Another reason the comics were jarring is that in several cases throughout both, the personality of a character was completely different from page to screen. Rosalind, Harvey, and Edward Spellman in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, as well as Diego, Klaus, and Vanya in The Umbrella Academy.

In getting the stories in both 2D and 3D format, I felt there was a literal flattening and enlivening of the characters depending on which medium I was consuming. The characters in the show felt more real, more believable, and had more well-rounded personalities. Whereas in the comics they felt distant and lacking in a way that’s difficult to explain. Then again, I may not feel this way if I’d read the comics first.

In the end, I loved The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comic but found The Umbrella Academy comic mediocre. (It pains me to say that because The Umbrella Academy was written by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, my favorite band of all time, and I usually love every creative thing he does! And while I was fortunate enough to snag tickets to their reunion tour show in Detroit, it’s been postponed for a year due to coronavirus. I’ve cried about this several times. Anyway…)

The experience did inspire me to check for books and comics before I watch a TV show, though. It got me questioning whether the book is always better or if your opinion is formed by what you experience first. By nature of being bibliophiles, it makes sense that book lovers would jump to the defense of the book and say the book is better. I certainly have in cases where I’ve read the book first, which is most of the time. But with these two comics where I saw the show first, as much as I hate to admit it, I disagree.

I want to know what you think! Is the book really always better or is your opinion determined by what you see first?