Sleepy hollow was a hit film starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci and directed by Tim Burton. The big change in the film is that Ichabod Crane was now a New York police officer who comes to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of murders, and the murders, of course, are all supernatural. Crane falls in love with Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter of the richest family in town. It turns out that Katrina knows magic, and for a while Crane thinks that she may be behind the Headless Horseman who is killing a number of people in town. It turns out, however, that Katrina used her magic for good. In the end, the Horseman is arrested and Crane and Katrina leave together for New York, with a young boy, Masbath, whose father is murdered, and Masbath becomes Crane’s assistant.
Well, 26 years later, IDW is making a sequel to the movie in a miniseries that really makes it feel like it could be an ongoing series.
Return to Sleepy Hollow Issue #1 is by writer Casey Gilly, artist Savanna Mayer, colorist Dearbhla Kelly, and letterer Valeria López, and it picks up 15 years after the events of the film, with Katrina and Ichabod breaking up, and Katrina returning to Sleepy Hollow, and Ichabod (and Masbath) remaining in New York.
What dangers threaten Sleepy Hollow?
Right off the bat, you can tell how different this comic will be, because Savanna Mayer’s art style is fascinating. HereThis is how she describes herself:
I would say the figurative/old comic style. I take so much inspiration from Chris Riddel, Tony DiTerlizzi and Jeremy Bastian. I grew up following a very traditional pen and ink style, very close to the golden age of comics like Jeffrey Catherine Jones and his contemporaries. This traditional basis of my work is reflected in the way I now work digitally. I’m often asked if my digital works are traditional when in fact I just prefer to use a brush that most closely resembles a pencil to get that beautiful grainy but at the same time clean line texture.
So you can see how stunning his artwork is, and Casey Gilly builds directly on Mayer’s fascinating and distinctive style early in the story, as a young woman is killed in the woods. She brings up the rather important point that these woods were once filled with a demonic creature, and sure enough, she is killed horribly. It was so well designed.
Of course it lets us know that things are going
What is Katrina’s new contract?
Katrina is now an undertaker, but she and her daughter also investigate murders.
Source: IDW Editions