Longtime DC exclusive artist Freddie Williams II moves to creator-owned series The Bequest

(Image credit: AfterShock Comics)

Longtime DC exclusive artist Freddie Williams II has announced plans for The Bequest, a creator-owned comic book created alongside writer Tim Seeley for AfterShock Comics.

The Bequest follows a group of fantasy heroes from another world to Chicago, where they must hunt down artifacts and weapons taken from their world before they cause too much destruction.

"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!" reads AfterShock's description of The Bequest.

"Welcome to Chicago, Illinois! Where the magical items from Tangea are being traded on the black market and are messing everything up," it continues. "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?"

The Bequest marks Seeley's third creator-owned title for AfterShock following his previous series Brilliant Trash and Dark Red. Seeley, a longtime fan of fantasy stories and role-playing games, states The Bequest will explore how a group of heroes from another world grapples with the morality and politics of the modern-day.

"It's the story of a band of adventures from a Dungeons & Dragons style fantasy world who have been stationed on our world to do a very specific job - stop the black market trade of magic items for technology," Seeley states in the series announcement.

"I love fantasy (I spent a good portion of my career drawing The Dark Elf adaptations by R.A. Salvatore), and I wanted to smash together the tropes of that genre with the world we live in today," he continues. "Our 'heroes' are essentially thieves, as they steal treasure. How does a character like that play in modern America, a place teetering between 'woke' liberalism and ignorant conservatism?"

"Also, I get to work with Freddie and Jeremy whose work I loved on my Injustice Vs. Masters of the Universe comic from DC."

As for Williams, who has spent the last few years as a DC exclusive artist, he states that he became interested in pursuing a creator-owned series alongside Seeley when the pair worked together on the aforementioned Injustice vs. Masters of the Universe.

"Tim Seeley and I really clicked when we worked together on Injustice VS Masters of the Universe, so, even during that project I started asking him if he had some creator ideas that we might be able to flesh out together, and that's how things got started!" Williams explains.

Here's a gallery of interior pages:

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"Jeremy Colwell and I have worked together for the last several years, he's an expert at coloring inkwash and now, on Bequest, I've been pleasantly surprised at what he's brought coloring my Pen & Ink work!" he continues, expanding on the book's full creative team. "It's cool when you're working with somebody for years and then they continue to surprise you with the variety of skills! And Mike Marts is an Editor I worked with at both DC and Marvel, and it's awesome working with him again!"

"The whole creative team at AfterShock is a close knit group and I can see myself working with them on multiple projects."

The Bequest #1 is due out March 17.

Freddie Williams III once almost rebooted WildCATS for DC - with Batman on the team.

I've been Newsarama's resident Marvel Comics expert and general comic book historian since 2011. I've also been the on-site reporter at most major comic conventions such as Comic-Con International: San Diego, New York Comic Con, and C2E2. Outside of comic journalism, I am the artist of many weird pictures, and the guitarist of many heavy riffs. (They/Them)