This isn't their best effort to ruin his legacy, IMO...The prequels just seem to lack the temerity of their other derivative crapfests.
You're not thinking "big" enough. If you really want to see DC crap all over Watchmen, wait until what happens if the prequels (and possible sequel) sell really well: there's no way DC won't break down at that point and find a way to do DCU/Watchmen team-ups, most likely in the concept of a weekly crossover "big event" mini-series.
If I'm thinking correctly, then they have already laid the groundwork for such a crossover. Isn't their a Watchmen earth in the 52-niverse? Though, I think they also admitted that it wasn't THE Watchmen universe...
Could be.
I can easily envision the idea that there's a "Watchmen" universe that is essentially the prequel universe, not unlike the "alternate timeline" version of "Star Trek" from the Abrams movie.
That universe will be the one that teams up with the DCU.
And we will probably find out that the "prequels" are actually just tales from the alternate universe, where the events of the Moore novel may or may not happen someday (kind of like how DC couldn't decide for a while in the 80s-90s whether DKR was Elseworlds or not).
