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Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit gets a trippy comic book cover makeover. The Queen’s Gambit is one of the streaming service’s newest hit shows starring Anya Taylor-Joy. Taylor-Joy plays the main character Beth Harmon, a young chess prodigy who goes from an orphan to being one of the most successful chess players in the world during the 1960s. While the strategy board game is certainly the focus of the show, substance abuse is also a key part of the story.
Beth learned how to play chess at a young age in the basement of her orphanage with the custodian Mr. Shaibel. Beth immediately picks up on the concept and quickly becomes obsessed with the game. The orphanage uses tranquilizers on the children in the form of a green pill called Xanzolam, which Beth gets addicted to. Beth saves her pills up and takes them all at once so that she can visualize a chessboard and pieces above her bed at night to practice the game. This addiction only becomes worse as she gets older, as Xanzolam and alcohol become more readily available.
A new piece of artwork by thebutcherbilly reimagines The Queen’s Gambit as a comic book. The artist uses the effects of Beth’s addiction to create a strange piece of art that almost looks like the cover of a Science Fiction comic. The black-and-white comic cover, as well as a colored version, can be seen below:
While a TV show about chess wouldn’t usually be considered a thrilling subject for a TV show, The Queen’s Gambit did extremely well for Netflix. Since it’s release in October, The Queen’s Gambit has gotten rave reviews and is often considered one of the best shows of 2020. Taylor-Joy’s performance as Beth has been praised, but the show’s overall aesthetic really submerses the audience into the feel of the ’60s. The show has been incredibly popular with audiences, but it’s highly unlikely The Queen’s Gambit season 2 will happen since the mini-series effectively brought Beth’s story to a close.
The Queen’s Gambit is considered a work of fiction but was also inspired by true events. The Netflix series was adapted from Walter Tevis’ book of the same name, which he based on his own experiences as a chess player. Xanzolam, the drug that caused Beth to see chess pieces move across her ceiling, isn’t actually a real drug but is similar to chlordiazepoxide, aka Librium. The representation of Beth’s hallucinations from Xanzolam makes for some of the most visually pleasing scenes in the show, and as the artist above makes clear, the imagery can make for some stunning artwork as well.
Source: thebutcherbilly
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