Feral #5
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFeral #5 — subtitled 'Fall' — serves as the closing chapter of the series' inaugural arc, a structural milestone that locks in the storytelling template for every arc that follows: a punishing countdown to dispersal rather than a tidy resolution. The issue delivers the arc's most consequential character losses, confirming the death of Jonas and the full transformation of Patch into one of 'the Bad Kind,' moves that establish once and for all that the series operates under genuine anyone-can-die stakes — not merely as genre decoration. It also first makes explicit that the Lyssavirus-8 contagion poses a threat to humans as well as animals, dramatically expanding the scale of the world and the horror register of the book. As the issue that closes issues #1–5 — collected as Feral Vol. 1, the ALA Outstanding Comics Award for Young Adults Series Honor Book for 2025 — it is the definitive entry point and thematic thesis statement for one of Image Comics' most talked-about ongoing series of the 2020s.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Feral was conceived by Tony Fleecs and Trish Forstner as a deliberate creative inversion of their breakout hit Stray Dogs: where that series trapped dogs inside a confined domestic space with a human threat, Feral throws cats into an open, infected wilderness facing an external contagion. Fleecs has stated publicly that the duo intentionally contrasted the two series — dogs that forget versus cats that remember and hold grudges — building the new book on character friction rather than shared sympathy. The series was announced exclusively at The Hollywood Reporter in December 2023, launched at Image Comics in March 2024, and assembled a full creative team of Fleecs (writer), Forstner (pencils/inks), Tone Rodriguez (inks), and Brad Simpson (colors). Issue #5, released July 24, 2024, closed the first arc and was solicited under the chapter title 'Fall,' the first issue in the run to carry an explicit chapter title on its title page.
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- Released July 24, 2024, by Image Comics; written by Tony Fleecs, art by Trish Forstner and Tone Rodriguez, colors by Brad Simpson.
- Titled 'Fall' (Chapter Five) — the first issue in the Feral series to carry a chapter title on its interior title page.
- Serves as the finale of Arc 1, which was subsequently collected in Feral Vol. 1 TP (released September 4, 2024), collecting issues #1–5.
- Confirms the death of Jonas — shot by animal control — and the complete feral conversion of Patch (infected by a rabid raccoon in issue #1, fully turned by issue #4).
- Reveals that the Lyssavirus-8 outbreak is not confined to animals: the contagion is shown to threaten humans as well, broadening the series' apocalyptic scope.
- Ends with the original trio permanently fractured: Patch fully infected, Lord gone into the woods alone, and Elsie left to navigate the world with only Gigi.
- Feral #5 shipped with multiple variant covers, including a ComicTom101 SDCC 2024 exclusive (a Midsommar movie-poster homage by Tony Fleecs), a Cover B movie-homage variant, a 1:10 incentive virgin variant, a 1:25 Agnes Garbowska virgin variant, and several retailer-exclusive homage covers (including a 'Night of the Creeps' homage by Trish Forstner for High Horse/Joey from Pico/Heavy Mental Comics).
- The Feral series — of which this arc-closing issue is a key component — earned the American Library Association Outstanding Comics Award for Young Adults Series Honor Book recognition in 2025, and has been translated into French.
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