Everybody knows that Watchmen is one of the most (if not the most) acclaimed graphic novels of history. But, what may be unknown to some people and even to few comic book fans is that “Fearful symmetry”, the fifth chapter in Alan Moore’s story, doesn’t get that name only because of Blake’s poem. Actually, the whole chapter’s design is made in a way that each page has a correspondent mirrored page. Page one is symmetric to page twenty-eight (the last one), page two is symmetric to page twenty-seven, and there it goes… until we reach the middle pages (fourteen and fifteen) where we get an astonishing sequence by Dave Gibbons working like a perfect central mirror for the whole story.

When we talk about page design, the symmetry is perfect and very easy to be observed, but it does not occur only in that way. Some pages have a frame by frame symmetry, while others has only some images in common, but in different panels. Also, the correspondence can be found in multiple forms: sometimes frames have the same colors, other times they have people in similar situations… but, besides the design, the mirrored pages always have the same characters.

I won’t elongate any more because there’s no telling here that can’t be better done by showing. Without further ado, here we go:

First panel from page one and last panel from page twenty-eight. The correspondence is quite clear, I believe.

Second panel from page one and eighth panel from page twenty-eight. “Everything balances” is a perfect phrase to finish a story about symmetry, don’t you think?

Third panel from page one and seventh panel from page twenty-eight. Besides the color, I see that both images show some agressiveness.

Fourth panel from page one and sixth panel from page twenty-eight. Here the images don’t have much in common, but they’re both bluish in contrast with the red ones in the same pages.

Fifth panel from page one and fifth panel from page twenty-eight. Both red.

Sixth panel from page one and fourth panel from page twenty-eight. Trash can in both panels.

Seventh panel from page one and third panel from page twenty-eight. Red color.

Eighth panel from page one and second panel from page twenty-eight. Similar colors.

Last panel from page one and first panel from page twenty-eight. A window and the red color.

First panel from page two and last panel from page twenty-seven. Same window.

Second panel from page two and eighth panel from page twenty-seven. Same window and color.

Third panel from page two and seventh panel from page twenty-seven. Same window and color.

Here I couldn’t see an exact frame by frame symmetry, so I chose to show the whole strips. Fourth to sixth panels from page two (up) and fourth to sixth panels from page twenty-seven (bottom). We can see some correspondence in colors and items like guns. Also, the little statue is exactly in the same position in both sixth panels.

Seventh to last panels from page two (up) and first to third panels from page twenty-seven (bottom). Both strips occur in the same place.