[SPEAKER_01]: What's up everybody welcome to comic book club.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am Alex.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Justin and we are what's good at the IDW booth We're right at the signing section which is pretty cool and we have an amazing guest for you Savannah Myers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Savannah welcome to the podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for having me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am so excited to have you here You are the artist on Return to Sleepy Hollow which is coming out October 29th my birthday So this is a very nice present for me
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the official sequel to the Tim Burton movie, Sleepy Hollow.
[SPEAKER_01]: To keep it focused on me for a second, I'm going to tell you what embarrassing story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sleepy Hollow was one of the first two DVDs I ever bought specifically because I was like This is really gonna push my DVD player all of these visuals and I bought it just like a kicker in a Costco of all places Really good, but I love that movie back of the day is the point.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was really into it Coming into this project was that something that you were obsessed with?
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you familiar with?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where are you now?
[SPEAKER_01]: What were your thoughts on that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, so growing up as a little Goth kid, um, obviously very incitembered and all the spooky Goth horror stuff, um, and, uh, I've only seen the movie a few times, um, but I loved let, um, everything was very dark, so you almost couldn't see the backgrounds.
[SPEAKER_03]: You really had to focus on the characters and how they interacted with each other and just how goofy Ikebod was and how freaked out in the school mission was that just it was so funny It was the perfect Makes of like the levity of the humor of his school missionist along with the horror of not knowing what's gonna happen So I really enjoy that movie because of that
[SPEAKER_00]: So then coming into this, like, you can't make this as dark as the movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then, where do you, using that as your base, where do you go to get to the book that we have?
[SPEAKER_03]: So through discussions with Casey, the writer, and Riley my editor, we had a lot of talks of what happened before the headless horseman.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, was this how and always like this?
[SPEAKER_03]: Was there something deeper and darker?
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's kind of where the story comes from?
[SPEAKER_03]: of maybe sleepy hollow is always a little bit messed up and the headless horseman just happened to show up at the perfect time and once you remove him from the situation what is left and what is there left is still in cover.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, just take a big step back.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is your first published comic where, uh, which is super cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Congratulations.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you've been doing an art for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: What actually led to this job?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what's the thing that hooked them that got you?
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, specifically for this job.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, it was portfolio day on Blue Sky.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was posting my portfolio of my comic book or just like,
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I guess I'll just post it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm probably not gonna get anything and all of a sudden Riley was in my comments like, hey, I just sent you an email and I was like, oh, what is this?
[SPEAKER_03]: And I open the email.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, hey, would you like to work on sleepyhallow?
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, uh, yes, of course.
[SPEAKER_03]: What's this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The system works.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it turns out blue sky is not an echo chamber.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a pretty side blue sky joke.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a pretty out there, really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's so cool, that is super cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once you got the job though, what was the experience like going from doing work for yourself to doing the work for I-DW?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so from college, after I did a few odd jobs, I just started doing freelance full-time, and recently incorporated doing freelance comics because that's my passion.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, you know what?
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel comfortable enough in my style that I can start offering that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I started building up my portfolio of just like private comic commissions, and just doing some stuff for myself, like self-publishing some stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, just let's do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about your style a little bit because I love to look into this book.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's absolutely gorgeous I was trying to encapsulate the different elements of your style as I was looking through it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw a little bit of wood cuts Yeah, I love to see that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so how do you characterize it?
[SPEAKER_03]: So, I think a lot of my style originates from reading Spider-Wake as a child.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, like a lot of Tony, Deeter Lizzy, Influence, and then the Edgewood Chronicles with Chris Redell.
[SPEAKER_03]: Those two guys, like, I remember just in fifth grade during lunch, everyone's playing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And just like trying to copy these drawings of this beautiful, linework words, like kind of creepy, kind of spooky.
[SPEAKER_03]: But just gorgeous to look at and just trying to emulate that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's where my origin sort of started in my base.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the book there's a lot of horrifying images just to that but there's also like there's a little bit of a love story or sort of like a fucked up love story here can you talk about sort of getting into that more emotional side um so i i love doing horror i love doing gritty stuff but i also love romance because um it's not always just like a passionate bodice ripper
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the humanity of I may not be a perfect person, but will you still love me after everything that we've been through?
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think if it's two people who have been through enough, they sort of have to turn to each other and like we've been through enough and no one else knows what we've been through We have this shared experience and love sort of often comes from that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: One other extra I would think challenge with this book is, since it is based on a movie it's not just Tim Burton's look, but you also have the actors, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got Johnny Depp, you've got Christina Ricci, you've got potentially other actors showing up as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't look like that in this book, so which I honestly think is good, like it separates it out into a zone thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like how do you strike that line between making sure that it feels like it has that
[SPEAKER_03]: So, I did a lot of costume design research for the period because this is 15 years after the sort of colonialism where the movie takes place and now we're in Regency Era.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I looked a lot about the movie costumeing choices and then I also looked at the old cartoon with Ikebod and Hode Animation.
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I was asked to do character designs before I even got the script, I tried to incorporate those to try to make like a lot of choices of like, is it going to be a goofy eikobot, is it going to be a scooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also a really nice pacing in this book between sequences that are relatively straightforward, dialogue sequences, and then every once in a while you hit us with this paddle that is just much more representational.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that something that came from you from Casey Gillie's script, a combination of the two?
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't say from my side on that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just work with the script that I'm given.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I have heard Casey say that she has seen some of my work and then from that has been influenced to change some of her scripts.
[SPEAKER_03]: based on what I do, so I think it's very collaborative.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you sit like some of your previous work?
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of my previous work, or sometimes on Instagram, like I'll send her a really scary panel, I'm working on, and then she'll be like, okay, can I show you what I'm working on?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, for the next script, and then we just egg each other on, and like how far, how squeamish can we make this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Was there anything that you were surprised about the popped for you, Art Wise?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think I was, I love scaring myself, but I'd never really get a chance because the people are very often.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's too scary.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's too much.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you draw it back a little bit?
[SPEAKER_03]: So when Riley and my editor was like, I want you to highlight the gore, I want you to really go for it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like make the panel that has the most score, make that the biggest one, and this is such a gift.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm so happy.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I've been able to run wild with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now this is your first New York Comic-Con as a creator for IDW.
[SPEAKER_01]: What does the experience been like?
[SPEAKER_03]: So this was actually, I grew up in Long Island.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is my first convention I ever went to when I was 12 years old.
[SPEAKER_03]: I also took me with my best friend.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, oh my god, this is amazing.
[SPEAKER_03]: I hope I can do this someday.
[SPEAKER_03]: So just come full circle of doing Artis Alley here for the first time and then official comic book artist.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's been insane.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what are you going to do on the day that comes out?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's better than celebrating my birthday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, well, I'll be hanging out of the bar for it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's going to be a long month for me because I have near City Comic-Con and then I go to Baltimore for a week and a half and then I fly to London, MCM So probably the day that it comes out.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll be flying back to Wisconsin for a great time
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, you have this now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Is there anything else you're looking forward to doing in the future or I actually have finished pitch-packing and manuscript for my own original graphic novel I have an agent and hopefully we'll have that published soon so and if not you have blue sky Yes, exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, it's a blue sky It's about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat congratulations.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what it is amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great
[SPEAKER_02]: I let's just turn back to number one There is even I get again I want the beat There's no goal in mind We stay coming to see ourselves And it's turn now already Get this out of the city You can't stop but I...
[SPEAKER_02]: They sit on crap, they gouges, and they let us see the moon And he's just nothing, they're like fast, they're sure they're speaking So grab your ring, hammer, don't be late, boring, hell fair