Ayo! Scott is not a fanboy (or a fan of boys, for that matter). Genius does recognize genius, though, which is why 12 single issues of Alan Moore’s 1986-87 comic classic Watchmen sit on Ayo!'s bookshelf, right next to the Hustler mag that pioneered labial close-ups. As a collection, the story of a disbanded team of flawed, masked vigilantes trying to solve the murder of one of their own and prevent nuclear holocaust in an alternate 1985 has gone on to become one of the best-selling books of all time and led to generations of fawning fanboys.

While the graphic novel was raking in cake for the suits at DC Comics, the movie adaptation sat in development hell, with good reason. Computer graphics weren't advanced enough to properly render Dr. Manhattan, a giant naked blue master of all matter, or the shifting ink blots on the mask of the unhinged hero and narrator Rorschach. Numerous writers and directors couldn't figure out how to turn the dense, dialogue-heavy epic about the nature of mankind and higher powers into a compelling movie that wouldn't cut out key pieces and piss off longtime Stans. Improved CGI and Zach Snyder, director of 300 and the Dawn of the Dead remake, were supposed to fix all that.

They do and they don't. As it turns out, Snyder's slavish devotion to source material is not necessarily a good thing. His original version of Watchmen, which included damn near every one of the painstakingly detailed panels Moore described for his artist Dave Gibbons, would have run close to four ass-aching hours in a theater seat. Cut down to an Ayo! quickie (two hours and forty minutes), the movie will still feel interminable for anyone who was expecting a rock 'em, sock 'em, cock 'em popcorn flick. Watchmen is a book and film for the pensive, not a full-speed ball-buster. The change in artistic mediums is worth noting, too. A reader can put down and revisit an epic graphic novel and flip back and forth to make sense of its complex narrative structure. A moviegoer overwhelmed by an epic, complicated comic movie is just stuck. But then Snyder wasn't trying to simplify things; he wanted his Watchmen adaptation to do for comic movies what the original book did for comics'completely buck the system. For non-devotees, though, it's more likely to make them want to buck'and blow their shit loose.

As someone who loved the original comics, Ayo! enjoyed the film's arresting visuals, its deliberate, slow pace, the quality of performances set against green screens and Snyder's insistence on not sacrificing deeper themes to make Watchmen the next Wanted. And yes, when the complete, unedited DVD comes out, Ayo! will spend four ass-aching hours watching it. Not like a fanboy, of course. Ayo! will be in his socks and drawers in your mom's basement.

Check out the trailer here to decide if you’ll be watching Watchmen.

Snyder and Gibbons were on hand to talk about the project, and from the looks of what we saw, the movie is going to be a banger. Check out seven reasons we think the project looks super…

BLUE BALLSINESS

Dr. Jonathan Osterman, a.k.a. Dr. Manhattan, the naked glowing blue “hero” who gains godlike powers when he’s disintegrated in a nuclear physics test chamber, is circumcised. We think. Snyder wasn’t kidding about showing him in all his naked glory, and we had to shield our eyes from his nuclear missile after a while. Lovers of blue balls, rejoice!

FACE VALUE

In the comic, Rorschach, the thugged-out vigilante who attempts to solve the criminal conspiracy at the heart of the story, wears a mask with ever-shifting ink blots. Thanks to movie voodoo, the blots come alive on screen. Prepare yourselves for endless geek sites analyzing what each blot says about Rorschach’s mental state at that very moment!

GAMES OF DEATH

Rather than put out a shitty-looking, underdeveloped console game, the Watchmen team is producing downloadable games that will take gamers back in time to reenact events from hero history. In particular, Snyder mentioned playing as the Comedian and assassinating JFK covertly from the grassy knoll. Fidel Castro has already made a down payment on his download.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

The graphic novel is too vast to include everything in the cinematic cut, but Snyder shot everything'including the parallel “Tales of the Black Freighter” comic-within-a-comic pirate story'and will be releasing that separately on DVD when the film hits theaters. Eventually, he plans to release an ultimate extended edition Watchmen DVD that includes that storyline. It should be great to watch the next time you have 11 spare hours to spend on your couch.

TAKING COVER

My Chemical Romance, which is 100 times less pussy than most emo bands, has recorded a cover of Bob Dylan’s nearly ten-minute song “Desolation Row” for the film. Ten minutes! We repeat'Zack Snyder will not be cut short!

GETTING ACTION

The comic was relatively light on action, implying more than it showed, but Snyder has infused the story with some of his signature, ab-crunching hand-to-hand combat. If you wanted all talk and no action, you’d follow the Presidential campaigns.

GENRE BENDER

The Watchmen comics challenged the superhero conventions of their day, and the film will do the same to comic adaptations. The Dark Knight was the first movie to touch on how strange a man dressed up as a bat would be in the real world, but Watchmen goes ten steps further examining how the world would change if there were heroes with super powers and nutty vigilantes running wild in the streets, and how fucked up they would be personally. Are you really surprised that retired hero Nite Owl needs a costume and some good old fashioned violence to get it up for supersex?