Feral #23
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFeral #23 (titled internally 'The Test') is the third chapter of the series' fifth arc and a pivotal installment in the ongoing Feral/Stray Dogs crossover event — the first time the casts of Tony Fleecs and Trish Forstner's two shared-universe Image Comics series have been brought together in sustained, plot-driving conflict. The issue advances the CDC laboratory setting introduced in #22, shifting the horror from open wilderness to sterile confinement and raising the series' narrative stakes by placing Elsie and her cats at the mercy of an experimental injection program while a human serial killer stalks the same facility. As the third consecutive flipbook-format chapter featuring dual cat and dog storylines running simultaneously, #23 cements the arc's formal ambition and deepens what critics have recognized as one of the most formally inventive ongoing horror comics of the mid-2020s. The broader series it belongs to received an American Library Association Outstanding Comics Award for Young Adults Series Honor Book citation in 2025, underlining the cultural reach of the Fleecs/Forstner 'Disney-horror' template.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Feral launched in March 2024 as the follow-up to Fleecs and Forstner's breakout Image Comics miniseries Stray Dogs (2021), which had itself approached nearly one million copies sold across all formats. The two properties were set in the same shared universe from the start, though the Stray Dogs crossover was kept secret by the full creative team until Feral #21 shipped in March 2026 — that issue sold out at the distributor level almost immediately, prompting Image Comics to fast-track a second printing. Issues #22 and #23 then continued the crossover in earnest, with Fleecs writing scripts that the art team of Trish Forstner, Tone Rodriguez, and colorist Brad Simpson split across dual storylines presented in the flipbook format the team had begun deploying from #22 onward.
Trivia · 7 facts
- Creative team: writer Tony Fleecs; artists Trish Forstner and Tone Rodriguez; colorist Brad Simpson.
- Issue is subtitled 'The Test' and is the third chapter of Feral's fifth story arc, which collects in Feral Vol. 5 TP (scheduled August 19, 2026).
- The issue continues the active Feral/Stray Dogs crossover, in which both casts are imprisoned in a makeshift CDC research facility housed inside a converted middle school, where scientists are injecting animals with an experimental substance as they race to develop a rabies cure.
- The plot centers on Elsie and the indoor cats attempting a jailbreak from the CDC facility, while a human serial killer — later identified across the arc as 'The Master' from the Stray Dogs series — stalks the same building; simultaneously, the Stray Dogs side follows Ghost becoming a reluctant ally to the dogs.
- Per the series' fan wiki, #23 marks the first cover appearance of Lord Fluffy Britches in twelve issues, and is the first main-series cover (outside of variant covers) to depict a human face, albeit masked behind a biohazard visor.
- Three cover variants were released: Cover A (Tone Rodriguez/Trish Forstner standard featuring a biohazard-visor reflection), Cover B (Tony Fleecs homage variant), and a 1:10 incentive Cover C (Tone Rodriguez virgin variant).
- The broader Feral series has been translated into French and earned an American Library Association Outstanding Comics Award for Young Adults Series Honor Book citation in 2025.
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