In late 1999, perfectly timed with the changing seasons and the light of day growing ever shorter while the trees released their colourful autumnal leaves to showcase a foreboding weave of bare and tangled branches, Paramount Pictures released Sleepy Hollow into darkened cinemas for a Gothically-eager audience.
Directed by dark auteur, Tim Burton, and starring the equally mesmerizing Johnny Depp, Sleepy Hollow was the more modern re-telling of the American Gothic story of author Washington Irving’s 1820 short story “the Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.
Most would most likely recall the story told in the animated Disney film, the Adventures of Ichabod and Toad.
Whether by way of the literary creation, the cartoon or the late twentieth century film, everyone knows of the tale’s central horror: the Headless Horseman.
The film, Sleepy Hollow, told the telling of New York City Polic Constable Ichabod Crane (portrayed by Depp), and his investigation of a series of particularly brutal murders in and around the small, upstate town of Sleepy Hollow. Under Burton’s direction, the setting is perfect: a gothic imagining of early, post-Civil War American life in an obscure town where none can be trusted.
The film went on to gross over $200 million and received accolades for its dark visual experience and has become something of a cult classic – especially for fans of the mercurial Burton.
Today, we get a long-sought sequel to that tale with the comic book release of Return to Sleepy Hollow #1!
Written by Eisner-Award winner, Casey Gilly (Buffy The Last Vampire Slayer) and richly illustrated by Savanna Mayer in their major comic book debut, Return to Sleepy Hollow takes place fifteen years after the end of the film. Here you’ll find all the impending doom and gothic frights that you’d expect of the Burton film.
There’s a deeper evil at work in Sleepy Hollow, more heinous than the Headless Horseman himself! Ichabod Crane, that investigator of supernatural mysteries returns to town that made him famous around the world. There, reunited with his estranged and bewitching love, Katrina Van Tassell, Crane will uncover the horrible, tangled roots of Sleepy Hollow’s origins – a beginning layered with black magic and steeped in blood!
Return to Sleepy Hollow makes for perfectly dark and thoroughly enjoyable reading this Halloween season!
Get on your horse and make the run to your local comic book shop and pick up Return To Sleepy Hollow #1 today!
