4 out of 5

A gorgeous collection of By The Horns vol. 1, the story content of which is reviewed here; this is a review of the hardcover collection in terms of bang-for-buck quality.

In short, if my main praise for the series was that you could tell how much love went into it, that gets doubly expressed in the HC presentation.

A handsome, well-designed spine – clear titles, credits, and even character images, that will look great next to more volumes of this – with amazing, engaging front and back pieces (the front promising; the back brutal); endpapers that depict closeups of the world map; full covers; an extra short story; backmatter / process pages with afterwords; tons of all great pinups from varied artists (with Muhr doing varied styles himself!); and… a bookmark!

The spine lays pretty flat for easy reading of the thick but flippable full-bleed pages, on which the artwork pops.

(Plus, the Kickstarter bonus trading cards are super fun…)

So, er, what’s with the minus one star?

Table of contents and page numbers, y’all. I know, we have a bookmark that I praised, but I think oversized collections – especially with extras, and especially with more than 5 or 6 issues of content – benefit from one or both of these QOL additions.

I’m a jerk.