Covalently functionalizing mechanical exfoliated monolayer and bilayer graphenides with λ-iodanes led to the discovery that the monolayers supported on a SiO₂ substrate are considerably more reactive than bilayers as demonstrated by statistical Raman spectroscopy/microscopy. Supported by DFT calculations we show that ditopic addend binding leads to much more stable products than the corresponding monotopic reactions due to much lower lattice strain of the reactions products. The chemical nature of the substrate (graphene versus SiO₂) plays a crucial role.