‘Sleepy Hollow’
From Boom! Studios, Marguerite Bennett (“Logan’s Legacy,” “Angela: Asgard’s Assassin”) gives an adaptation of the Fox Television series Sleepy Hollow. For those of you who watch Sleepy Hollow, Bennett has done a really great job of capturing the complicated comical banter that comes from a man out of time with the looming reality of a great evil bringing hell to Earth via the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, that makes the show such a joy. It’s nice to have a comic with a Black female in the lead. Lt. Abbie Mills, along with the recently resurrected Ichabod Crane, are destined as the “two witnesses” that stand between the world and the Apocalypse.
However, I wish that someone could figure out how to represent a Black woman, who actually looks like a Black woman. From issue to issue, Lt. Abbie Mills (portrayed by Nicole Beharie) looks like a tanned Caucasian, and occasionally an Asian woman. And let’s not talk about her hair! With the full spectrum of colors available, why is it so difficult to draw and ink a petite, vertically challenged, weave-flinging Black woman? Despite the artistic challenge common to the comic book world, the first two comics in the limited series are stand-alone stories, that don’t require you to have watched the television series to understand what is going on to enjoy.
Seems like the first two examples are negative depictions of women of color, no?