Looking ahead guarantees few sure-fire predictions in comics. But when the creative team behind one of the best comics of the 2020s promises not quite a sequel, you have to take a chance. If you haven’t read Stray Dogs from Tony Fleecs and Trish Forstner, you owe it to yourself. No spoilers here; if you don’t know what it’s about, just know it’s good.
Fleecs and Forstner describe their upcoming Feral as The Aristocats meet The Walking Dead. Don’t take it quite literally. What it does mean is that you’ll see the world through the eyes of cats with personalities and character, faced with a life or death situation. Instead of zombie-ism, they’re trapped outside during a vicious rabies outbreak — the animal equivalent? It may look like a Disney movie, but only if the studio had gone crazy and let George A. Romero direct it.
“We didn’t want to repeat ourselves with this follow up book so it really was at first, thinking about: Okay, Stray Dogs is dogs trapped in a house. So, let’s have this one be about what’s really frightening in wide open spaces. The antagonist in Stray Dogs is someone who’s evil from the inside out. So, let’s have these cats face something that’s like an infection. An external threat. The stray dogs were forgetful… So these cats remember EVERYTHING,” said Fleecs in The Hollywood Reporter’s coverage of the announcement. “These cats hold a grudge. That’s what we did differently. But the thing we did the same way was, we tried to build the story on characters, and how they fit together and how they clash and then just… What’s the worst possible situation we can put them in?”
Forstner added: “We are really trying to give the readers a story to remember. We’re pushing the boundaries of what we already established in our little niche of storytelling. I could have never seen myself even reading a scary story like this early on in my comics journey, but now I can’t wait to see what happens next. Every page turn is a surprise.”
This isn’t like Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s We3, itself an excellent tale of animals wandering the countryside in danger. There the trio react very much like animals probably do. In Fleecs and Forstner’s worlds, animals act with a bit of human personality projection, still constrained by their species. That sounds awkward, but it works for a take both delightful and heartbreaking.
The first issue of Feral lands on March 27, 2024 from Image Comics. By April, I predict Elsie, Lord Fluffy Britches, and Patch will become our favorite action heroes in 2024. So be sure to let your local comics shop know you want this sooner than later.
