Pages 5 and 24

These pages are divided into eight panels. The extended panel on page 5 is in the first postion, but on page 24 the big picture falls in panel 2. This correspondence is our first visual indication that the pages are mirror images on the basic layout level: a fact reinforced by all the other pages in the chapter that have asymmetrical layouts. All the pages of Chapter V are meant to be folded against one another like Rorschach blots, working from the center fold of the book out; or to be held up to a mirror, the primal symmetry. Thematically, the fourth panels on each page are disturbing, with Rorschach breaking an egg (5.4) juxtaposed against Jacobi's broken skull (24.4). In the seventh panel of each page (5.7 and 24.7) the action centers on Rorschach's hands.

Rorschach and Jacobi are alone in these pages. Each one "breaks face," as they say in the theater: Rorschach pulls up his mask to eat, while Jacobi's face is broken by the bullet wound. It suggests that there are only two ways out of the costumed community: you can walk away (a partial solution at best), or you can die.