Shaded and available online for the first time, I happily present to you a comic-sample from the midst of Chapter 9 of Tatterhood. These pages were drawn and inked in advance for a ‘Pen and Sword’ discussion back in 2015 – where a panel of authors discussed studying and researching swordplay, to help with their writings (or in this case, comics). Fight passages were read from everyone’s books, and then the fights were demoed by swordfighters.
Now, when I was asked to be on the panel, I didn’t have a current “proper scene” prepared that would be fitting for stage – most of the fights occur in less than a few seconds and either involve groups and/or someone quickly running away or dying. So I had to jump far ahead in the Tatterhood story to get to a scene where there was a little banter, only a few fighters, and had the fight go on for a minute or two.
I ‘read’ my comic out (with each panel being projected to the audience) and the performance team slowly went through each action as they were revealed. Then the whole fight was performed in one shot!
This ‘demo’ fight was performed at a few speeds slower than what the ‘real’ one would be – but that’s because we all care and value life, and when you’re cutting with real swords, and swinging around a real, giant oak wooden spoon, you really, really don’t want anyone to get hurt. And it’s quite easy to get hurt by hefty over-sized cutlery.
