Last fall, editors Michele Abounader, Brent Fisher, Fell Hound, and Justin Richards launched a Kickstarter for the comics anthology Sharp Wit and the Company of Women, featuring 19 stories about strong women and their weapons. Spanning a wide spectrum of genres, the book was “created by and for LGBTQIA+ creators and audiences.” It raised just over $31 thousand in a 30-day campaign.
Now, the anthology has been published by A Wave Blue World and The Beat can share the entirety of one of its stories: “Cadence,” written by Keith Frady and illustrated by Sarah Stern.
In a statement for The Beat, Frady revealed that the character Cadence had been living in his head for some time before making her way to the pages of Sharp Wit: “She’s a mute warrior poet who wields a quill as well as a sword, navigating a world filled with such wonder and beauty that she wants to both fight for it with blood and preserve it with ink.
“For a long time I couldn’t find an adventure that quite fit her. Seeing the call for Sharp Wit really helped the story fall into place. An anthology championing strong women with blades both metaphorical and literal asked the obvious question: What, specifically, is Cadence fighting for?” he explained.
“Enter Hunter, a charming rascal of a bard who ironically can’t read. To paraphrase the opening of mine and Sarah’s pitch to Michele and Brent: ‘A mute warrior poet. An illiterate vagabond bard. How could they not fall in love?'” Frady continued. “Including Hunter in the story added ‘music’ to the growing list of love languages the comic was starting to thematically collect, which helped me discover the adventure I’d been struggling to find for Cadence. It was one of the oldest: Orpheus’s descent into the underworld, which was a perfect fit for Cadence and Hunter.”
Stern reflected, “I think the key to a good retelling is to tap into what makes the story compelling and timeless and find a way to share that with others in your own unique voice. Keith has a real gift for evocative language and I felt like I could taste the love, grief, and joy in every line before I even started sketching.
“It was also a real pleasure to show a fat character in such a romantic light and to let her shine in such an emotionally and physically powerful role. This collection caters to a number of desperately underserved communities and it was a breath of fresh air to have that kind of creative design freedom,” she continued.
You can read Frady and Stern’s story, Cadence, below.
“Sharp Wit is such a beautiful book full of talented people and I love every story in it,” Stern said. “I’m so glad we had the chance to add to this collection. I hope the readers love Cadence and Hunter as much as Keith and I do!”
Frady added, “One great advantage of anthologies like Sharp Wit is that they let writers and artists shine new light on old tales. Sarah breathed life into the characters—her Death is exquisite—and managed to streamline a quest consisting of four characters and five settings into six beautifully composed pages. Sarah is such a pleasure to work with as a collaborator and the warmth and heartache in the comic is all thanks to her incredible skill.”
Sharp Wit and the Company of Women is available everywhere books are sold.
