It’s a thin line between the fantasy world and our own
Creative Staff:
Story: Tim Seeley
Art: Freddie E. Williams II
Colors: Jeremy Colwell
Letterer: Marshall Dillon
What They Say:
Welcome to the high fantasy world of Tangea! A land where wizards and warriors battle dragons in dark dank dungeons! Where thieves pillage ancient ruins and priests answer the audible words of their great gods!
Welcome to Chicago, Illinois! Where the magical items from Tangea are being traded on the black market and are messing everything up.
Now, a group of Tangea adventurers must go undercover in our modern world to stop artifacts and monsters from falling into the wrong hands. But how will they fare in a world without wizards and warriors? A world without heroes?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
When a new Tim Seeley book comes down the line I know I have to stop and look at it. I’ve had such a weird hit-or-miss experience with their work over the years that it’s one of the more fascinating ones to me in trying to figure out why some work over others. Bequest is one that feels very different from a lot of his other works simply by the extension of working with Freddie E. Williams II here. There’s something that, even as it uses magic and different worlds, feels like it’s more grounded and has a different kind of presence. A lot of that comes through in the character designs to stand out as it does and even the lettering for it from Marshall Dillon takes on a look that stands out like it wants to define itself. There’s a good sense of power and immense detail to so much of this that it almost overwhelms.
While Seeley’s works have always been verbose, Bequest feels it even more so and comes across feeling like the first chapter of a large novel series than the opening issue of a comic book series. There’s a lot going on here and I’m only going to go superficial with it simply because there is so much to get lost in the weeds with. The premise is that there are two worlds where we have the modern world we know and there’s a more fantasy-oriented world that exists just beyond the veil. The problem is that this is a very thin veil and a man named Craeve from that realm came across years ago in an effort to sell simply magic trinkets in exchange for high-tech weapons. He’s also building up a nice white supremacist army at his beck and call to use to cause trouble on Earth. It’s a pretty simple set up overall and we’re introduce to part of this in seeing how people are being set up with weapons of magic in order to clear out parts of Chicago to take over more territory.
The other realm, Tangea, gives us a few things to focus on and an immense amount of world-building through the dialogue that we get. It’s here that we’re introduced to a group known as “War Party” that’s lead by Warlock Garthodd that includes a night elf, a half-elf, and a wood sprite. They had a dwarf but he died in this issue as one of their dungeon ventures went particularly bad and they had to be rescued by some elders – who turn out to be Garthodd’s parents. What they’ve done is to send the group to Earth as part of their punishment for being so problematic and to deal with Craeve. This is happening under the supervision of the being already doing this job of patrolling the line for the past fifty years that will also be supervising them. That he’s a dragon named Puff that comes across as a kind of hobbled older black man here is nothing short of comical in how he’s presented in dialogue and movement until he makes his true stature and power clear here.
In Summary:
Bequest sets up a simple idea but populates it with a lot of characters on both sides and a lot of world-building material baked into it as well. Tim Seeley has a lot of things going into it so that it feels fully realized and that definitely gives the whole book a lot more weight because of it. But it also makes it a dense read, which is good, as it’s not something you flip through in a few minutes and know all that you need to. It sets up for what should be a fun series with some crazy times ahead knowing his past works and that’s going to give Williams an immense amount of freedom and creativity to bring to life. Going by what we get in this opening issue, it’s going to be a really wild ride. Hopefully, it’s one that takes a little more time to breathe going forward as this is a really packed issue that could have been two issues easily.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: March 17th, 2021
MSRP: $4.99
