5
Watchmen Had an Entirely Symmetrical Chapter
DC Comics
Alan Moore, the coked-out great-uncle of the comic book world, is famous for his painstaking attention to detail -- his stories are so loaded with hidden messages that you're kind of wasting your money reading them just once. Watchmen, for example, is chock-full of literary allusions and historical in-jokes that you probably missed because you were too busy snickering at your own zingers about Doctor Manhattan's blue balls. But even if you pride yourself on having caught every single reference to 18th century Romantic poetry, none of that holds a candle to the fifth chapter's entirely symmetrical layout.
To demonstrate, here's the centerfold of the book:
DC Comics
Sorry, no boobs in this centerfold.
Notice how the panels reflect each other, with three on the left, three on the right, and the middle bisecting at the page break? Well, the entire 28-page issue is like that -- Page 1 mirrors Page 28, Page 2 mirrors Page 27, and so on, until the mirror syncs up at the centerfold.
Think of the effort, the sheer amount of planning Moore and artist David Gibbons had to do to make that possible. Now forget it, because it's nothing compared to what's coming next: Not only are all the panel layouts symmetrical, but the matching pages follow the same stories and characters. For instance, the first six pages of the issue show Rorschach breaking into Moloch's house; the last six pages show him breaking out of it. On Page 7, cops investigate a murder; they don't show up again until Page 22, its mirror twin.
DC Comics
Poster Buddha spends a lot of time in reflection.