The BeQuest #1

The BeQuest #1

Aftershock Comics 2021

Written by Tim Seeley

Illustrated by Freddie E. Williams II

Coloured by Jeremy Colwell

Lettered by Marshall Dillon

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?

Honestly I think this idea is long overdue to see the light of day. One of my favourite cartoons showed us the other way round so why haven’t we seen this before? If we have it got no advertising that’s for sure. One aspect of this that I really do like is how there’s this cosmic style guardians group who watch over all the realms. They are the ones who have decided to conscript Warlock Garthodd and his crew, sans one whom I am sorry wasn’t saved, to work for them. There is something about being conscripted that usually doesn’t sit well with folks so I am looking forward to seeing how this group of adventurers deal with it.

I am enjoying the way that this is being told. It feels like half & half to me, half D&D tabletop adventure and half a scripted tale and this really works in Tim’s favour here. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold, how the reader learns information and how the characters are introduced is some pretty amazing stuff. The character development is well on its way and it’s done in a very unique and interesting manner. While usually we can get a lot of information by the way they act this time around it’s more what those around them say of them that does the trick. The pacing is great and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story, the characters and this world it creates a wonderfully and delightfully crazy appeal.

I like the way that this is structured and how the layers within the story emerge. This helps us see how everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow. All of which conspires to take us on a journey that has as much humour as it does violence and subterfuge which isn’t an easy thing to do.

I am loving every moment of the interiors here. Freddie is an amazing artist and it seems like he’s just gotten better and better with each outing. The linework that we see with its varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level and quality of detail work is mind blowing to me. The creativity and imagination alone is worth it’s armour in gold, see what I did there. There is nothing here that isn’t stellar to look at and for me that’s quite a rare thing to see and from the characters themselves to the backgrounds and the two page spread is phenomenal. Mind you I would like to see actual backgrounds a lot more often. How we see the composition within the panels utilised to create the depth perception, sense of scale and that overall sense of size and scope is marvellous. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show such a masters eye for storytelling. The colour work is brilliantly rendered as well. How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work show an extraordinary eye for how colour should and does work.

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I applaud the song choice, long before I realised why, because those of us at a certain age will grin from earhole to earhole. I love this for what it is and it’s got all the makings of an old school fantasy novel from my early years. It you want something to make you forget your troubles, c’mon get happy, better chase all your blues away, then this is what you need.