Markisan Naso and Jason Muhr followed up the excellent Voracious with the even better By The Horns, creating a rich fantasy world with modern sensibilities — and a woman who hated unicorns. They’re looking to collect the first miniseries, By The Horns: The Wind Rises into a deluxe hardcover, and they’ve turned to Kickstarter to fund it.
The series and its follow-up, as well as trade paperback collections, were released by Scout Comics, but to do something special like a hardcover, the team said they had to turn to crowdfunding. Scout Comics is not involved with the crowdfunding campaign.
“Sure, By The Horns has a publisher and loyal fans, but the series still takes a lot to put it together and it’s a small, indie comic,” they said on their Kickstarter page. “All the costs to create the book come out of our pockets up front. So, when it comes to doing something really big thing like a hardcover edition, we just need a little help to make it happen.”
If you aren’t familiar with the series, it focuses on Elodie, a warrior with a tragic past:
Elodie hates unicorns. They trampled her husband. They destroyed her life. They’re impossible to find.
For nearly a year Elodie’s dedicated every waking moment to tracking down unicorns and exacting bloody revenge. But when she gets exiled from her home village for neglecting her duties, she travels across the continent with her wolf/deer companion, Sajen, to make one last attempt at finding the elusive creatures.
On the road, they soon discover that four ancient wind wizards are abducting mystical creatures and stealing their magic. Elodie means to go through them at any cost to make unicorns extinct, but she’ll need to rely on an increasingly reluctant Sajen, trust a floating-eyeball guide named Evelyn, and fake an alliance with two unicorn prisoners – Zoso and Rigby – who grant her the ability to rip off their horns and combine them to form wizard-slaying weapons. Will she decide to use those gifts to save magic in the world? Or kill all the unicorns left alive?
Markisan and Muhr are offering a range of rewards, stretch goals and add-ons for the campaign, as they seek to raise $8,500 to publish it. For $10 you can get a PDF of this first collection, or for $25 they’ll add digital copies of volume 2, the first Voracious trade and several comics by other creators. A print copy will cost you $40, while other tiers offer variant cover editions, prints, a bottle opener and drinking horns made from a real unicorn water buffalo horn.
Head over to their Kickstarter page to learn more.