Feral #6

History

Feral was announced in December 2023 and launched in March 2024 from Image Comics, conceived by writer Tony Fleecs and artist Trish Forstner — the same partnership behind the breakout xenofiction horror series Stray Dogs — with additional art by Tone Rodriguez and colors by Brad Simpson. Fleecs has stated publicly that the creative goal for Feral was deliberate contrast with Stray Dogs: where that series confined its horror to a single house and an internal human villain, Feral opens the terror into wide open wilderness and externalizes the threat as a spreading infection, pushing the duo's 'Disney-styled horror' aesthetic into something rawer and more expansive. Issue #6 sits at the precise seam between the first and second arcs (Arc 1 was collected in the September 4, 2024 trade paperback), making it both a capstone and a fresh entry point shaped by the team's stated desire to give each arc its own distinct flavor.

Trivia · 9 facts

• Written by Tony Fleecs; interior art by Trish Forstner and Tone Rodriguez; cover by Trish Forstner and Tony Fleecs; colors throughout the series by Brad Simpson.
• Officially designated a 'NEW STORY ARC' issue, making it the opening chapter of the series' second arc and a dual-function jumping-on point.
• Structured as a standalone, single-character P.O.V. issue told entirely through the eyes of Patch, the infected cat, a formal experiment uncommon in mainstream ongoing horror comics.
• Reveals in a flashback the precise moment Patch was scratched by a rabid raccoon — the origin scene of his infection — answering a narrative mystery seeded in earlier issues.
• Reveals Patch's backstory as an abandoned 'box kitten' before being taken in by owners, deepening his tragedy and adding emotional context to his fate.
• Despite his near-total loss of control to the infection, Patch is shown to retain a tortured shred of self-awareness, confessing guilt about betraying Elsie — a moment that reinforces the series' thematic concern with identity under catastrophic duress.
• The series as a whole — which Issue #6 anchors at its midpoint pivot — earned recognition as an American Library Association Outstanding Comics Award for Young Adults Series Honor Book (2025) and has been translated into French; the first arc was collected in the Feral Vol. 1 trade paperback (September 4, 2024), which also collects issues #1–5.
• Multiple variant covers were produced for Issue #6, including a Cover B Barbarians homage, a 1:10 Virgin variant, a 1:25 Maria Wolf Virgin variant, a store-exclusive Hannibal homage virgin variant, and a NYCC 2024 Gremlins homage variant.
• Feral is set in the same shared universe as Stray Dogs, the Fleecs/Forstner 2021 Image series, a shared-world connection that later becomes a full crossover event in the series' fifth arc.

Full credits