Feral #2
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFeral #2 is a pivotal second chapter in what has become a defining entry in the 'petsploitation' or xenofiction horror subgenre that Fleecs and Forstner essentially codified at the direct-market level with their earlier breakout, Stray Dogs. The issue marks the first appearances of the wild tomcats Scratch and Jonas, whose arrival expands the series' thematic inquiry into trust, community, and survival — and whose short, brutal story arcs exemplify the series' willingness to kill characters the reader has just grown to love. Taken alongside the dense horror-movie-poster homage variant program that the series carries throughout, issue #2 also establishes Feral as a self-aware love letter to genre cinema executed in the medium of sequential art. The series' first collected arc (issues #1–5, including this issue) went on to earn an American Library Association Outstanding Comics Award for Young Adults Series Honor Book in 2025, an unusually prestigious crossover recognition for an independently published horror title.
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Feral is the second major creator-owned collaboration between writer Tony Fleecs and artist Trish Forstner, both of whom broke through in the direct market with their 2021 Image series Stray Dogs — a Don Bluth-styled thriller that the publisher itself described as 'Lady and the Tramp meets Silence of the Lambs.' Forstner's background in classic 1980s–90s animation aesthetics and Fleecs's experience across licensed titles at every major publisher fused into a distinct visual brand that Feral — which launched in March 2024 — carries forward. Issue #2, released April 24, 2024, continued what was already a monthly ongoing, with interior inking support from Tone Rodriguez alongside Forstner's pencils and layouts.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published by Image Comics; released April 24, 2024; written by Tony Fleecs, with art by Trish Forstner and Tone Rodriguez.
- First appearances of Scratch and Jonas, two wild outdoor tomcats who rescue protagonists Elsie, Patch, and Lord (Lord Fluffy Britches) from a pack of rabid wolves — and whose fates prove the series' commitment to expendable supporting characters.
- The issue is part of the five-issue opening arc later collected as Feral TP Vol. 1 (September 4, 2024), which earned the American Library Association Outstanding Comics Award for Young Adults Series Honor Book (2025).
- Feral is an explicit companion/stealth sequel to the Fleecs–Forstner series Stray Dogs (Image, 2021); TV Tropes documents that issue #21 of Feral eventually confirms the two series share a continuity.
- Each issue of Feral carries at least one variant cover designed as a horror-movie-poster homage — documented variants for issue #2 include homages to A Nightmare on Elm Street, It Chapter 2, Smile, Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, and a Garfield parody cover by Amy Mebberson, among others; a 1:75 glow-in-the-dark variant was also produced.
- Issue #2 contains background-art Easter eggs: a rabid wolf visually referencing the animated film Balto, and a large infected cat drawn as a deliberate visual nod to Tigerstar from the Warriors book series.
- The series is rated T+ and carries 28 pages of story content per issue, maintaining the same format and page count as its predecessor Stray Dogs.
- Feral is described by critics and the publisher alike as escalating beyond Stray Dogs in terms of graphic violence and horror content, incorporating themes of rabies outbreak, cult mentality, and survival that the predecessor only gestured toward.
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