“For me, Watchmen isn’t a movie at all. It’s a miracle the likes of which my 14-year-old self would never have believed. Now the special thing that it still feels like only I know about has been given to the whole world. I hope they like it. I don’t think I realized how close I was to the original book until I saw such a loving, detail-rich, almost obsessive recreation of that universe. It had my heart pounding and head swimming. I barely slept that night. Someone took the most special personal thing of my adolescence and put it on a movie screen. That doesn’t happen every day.

“What will people who’ve never read Watchmen even think of this film? What will it be like for them to sit through these crazy, violent, colorful three hours and not recognize almost every line – almost every image? Will they be utterly baffled, bored, or totally love it? Is Watchmen even a good or bad movie? I have no idea. I stand powerless before the Gods I once worshiped in my attic bedroom, now moving and talking and fighting and loving on a giant screen. And I find myself unable to judge them.”

In other words, Nerdworld blogger Matt Selman, a longtime Simpsons writer and now one of the show’s executive producers, is a completely prejudiced and unreliable shill. He’s an invested pre-believer, a suck-up, an emotional pushover — his word means absolutely nothing.

Only when a vigorous non-fan of comic book fantasy and phantasmagoria like myself sees Watchmen and does cartwheels…only when someone like me freaks out and sings arias about this film will it mean anything to anyone.