Well it’s been a while hasn’t it! Need to do these blog posts more often, but with everything going on at the moment! It’s just finding time! So many unreviewed films since the Killing Joke!!! Well this post is going to act out as general overview of the TV series, ‘Black Mirror’ by Charlie Booker, but also as a commemoration to Butcher Billy‘s Golden Age comic book cover designs for all 13 episodes which have aired so far!
Black Mirror (AKA the Twilight Zone of today) is a British science fiction television anthology series created by Charlie Brooker and centred around dark and satirical themes that examine modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies. On Channel 4, it aired 2 series (3 episodes each) and a Christmas special, then became a Netflix exclusive airing 6 additional episodes. Each episode is as thought provoking as the last, and the similarities to modern day society can be disturbingly accurate; an example being the influence of Waldo the blue bear compared to Trump!
After much popularity, Butcher Billy decided at first to create 6 faux comic covers for the first 2 series. And after his work on these got a lot of attention too, he decided to create 8 more; 2 for the Christmas Special and the 6 Netflix exclusives. You can see all 14 designs below in chronological order:
SEASON 1
SEASON 2
CHRISTMAS SPECIAL
SEASON 3
Even if you haven’t seen the show, you can tell from these designs that they all have a twisted unsettling edge to them. All episodes have been brilliant in their own right, from the deeply disturbing (in the pilot episode a ‘fictional’ prime minister is made to have sexual intercourse with a pig), to the out right terrifying (bully-faced spiders, homicidally engineered bees, Wizzard), to the dramatic twists that most of the time leave you feeling dead inside. There are many TV shows that you can eventually become desensitised by (Walking Dead especially), but with Black Mirror you are always struck with these emotions and if you re-watch them, it’s as if you watch them anew. You will definitely enter another dimension of TV viewing when you watch these! …It’s a brilliant show though and definitely worth a watch; if you dare!