2 out of 5

Upon completing the first By the Horns volume and feeling rather underwhelmed by it, I remarked in my review that I was, at the very least, impressed by its intentions, and would be there for the next steps. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I feel the same about a forthcoming third volume after completing Dark Earth, the second one. Perhaps the team didn’t give themselves enough of a pause between books; perhaps the rather linear nature of this story was an attempt to simplify and distill the big splash of what came before; or perhaps a few other complete guesses. But the outcome of that was a story I can’t say I enjoyed, as it doubled down on writer Markisan Naso’s tendency toward tropey character archetypes to the extent of feeling hollow, and while artist Jason Muhr really meets the task of rolling out splash pages and new monster designs, it’s… too much for their style, which leans into a slightly cartoonish aesthetic that does not work well with depth, and requires a lot of acting. This means, generally, anthropomorphizing however many new creatures per book (4 would not be uncommon), which is cool for “these are all living creatures” world building, but undermines the impact of their appearance on a single page – if that appearance is to just get chopped in half by lead Elodie – and also means that that bevy of splash pages are, ultimately, cluttered and flat, even if conceptually well designed.

Dark Earth follows pretty directly on the consequences of the previous arc’s censure of magic by showing the negative impacts of that, thus kicking off an Elodie / Sajen / Evelyn quest to… get magic back. And perhaps that quest doesn’t trigger you, but it feels a bit soon for that, as in: we just solved it, now let’s unsolve it. If I struggled with feeling the weight of the story in the previous volume, this direct undoing pretty much guarantees I don’t feel it here. Furthermore, whereas the structure of volume one had a villain hoarding the magic as the end goal, here, the villain has to be manufactured: someone impacted by the events has now set Elodie as their own Big Bad. All of this could be a clever inversion – even the overall structure I’m criticizing, which might normally see volume 2 (discover magic) as the starting point, and volume 1 (stop someone from abusing magic) as the followup – but Naso’s over-eager characters don’t allow for deeper reads: it’s all rather right in your face, explained out loud, no subtlety (and if there is any, Muhr’s overacting will take care of that).

To double-rewind, these aspects of both creators worked really well in Voracious, but I really do think that the expanded palette of By the Horns just isn’t a good fit for that same style. Which doesn’t mean it’s not a good fit for them eventually – and why I hoped that hanging around after a formative arc might show progress – but the approach they’ve used since that former title just, to me, isn’t suited to this scale.

Fastforwarding again to complaining, the entire setup of Dark Earth is, essentially, volume 1 – again, holiday edition. Because Elodie is being tracked unawares, and because there’s not necessarily the same time constraints as there were before, the twelve issues take on the vibe of a leisurely journey from place to place. So the creatures they face along the way aren’t really a consequence borne out of taking the shortest path from A to Z; rather – even if there are story justifications – it’s kinda like, oh, we went here because it made for a funny story sequence, and, as confessed in the backmatter, sometimes Naso or Muhr just wanted to see something on the page. Is that a bad way to craft a story? Not if the seams are hidden. But again – there’s no subtlety here.

I don’t want to sit here bashing, so I’ll leave it there. The shortest way to sum this up: if you enjoyed the first volume, this is more of that. And I do know, to an extent, that the earnestness of the look and sound is purposeful, so, yeah, it’s really just not working for me, and I further accept that that hits harder because of how much I enjoyed Voracious. But I include this caveat to underline that I can still see the effort and passion that goes into this. However, if what’s prominent in Dark Earth are the aspects of By the Horns that are working for others, and / or are what Naso and Muhr are going to continue to emphasize, then I should get off the ride here.