Feral #9
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFeral #9 marks a pivotal turning point in the series' second story arc, delivering the issue's most substantial piece of world-building to date: the revelation that the Cat Lady — a recurring, mysterious human antagonist — is herself infected not only with rabies but, as implied by the educational definition page appended to the issue, with Toxoplasma gondii as well. This dual-infection twist deepens the series' commitment to genuine disease biology as horror scaffolding, elevating what might have read as a conventional monster-of-the-arc figure into a tragic, scientifically grounded character study. As the penultimate chapter of arc two, it also sharpens the central tension that Tony Fleecs and Trish Forstner have been building — the idea that supposed sanctuaries are the most dangerous places of all — and solidifies Feral's reputation for marrying Don Bluth-inflected illustration with Walking Dead-style survival horror in a way that earned the broader series a 2025 American Library Association Outstanding Comics Award for Young Adults Series Honor Book designation.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Feral launched in March 2024 from Image Comics as the follow-up to Fleecs and Forstner's breakout hit Stray Dogs (2021), a five-issue horror series that sold nearly one million copies across all formats and had its movie rights acquired by Paramount Animation. Fleecs has stated the creative team deliberately inverted the Stray Dogs formula for Feral — swapping a claustrophobic house and a human evil for open wilderness and an infectious, external threat — with Forstner's art, Brad Simpson on colors, and Tone Rodriguez contributing additional art and letters rounding out the core production team. Issue #9 arrived on January 15, 2025, as part of the ongoing monthly rhythm of the arc-structured series, and was later collected in Feral TP, Vol. 2: Cat Lady (March 12, 2025), which gathered issues #6–10.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published January 15, 2025 by Image Comics; written by Tony Fleecs, with interior art by Trish Forstner and Tone Rodriguez.
- Functions as the penultimate (fourth of five) chapter in the series' second story arc, subtitled 'Cat Lady,' with issue #10 serving as the arc's conclusion.
- Key narrative revelation: the Cat Lady is revealed to be infected with both rabies and, per the issue's appended educational definition page, Toxoplasma gondii — deepening the series' use of real-world disease biology as a horror device.
- Central story conflict: Elsie races to protect Gigi and her kittens from both the rabid Cat Lady and other human threats inside what the group had hoped was a sanctuary.
- Four cover editions: Cover A (Forstner/Rodriguez main cover), Cover B (Tony Fleecs' Silent Night, Deadly Night homage variant), Cover C (1:10 Fleecs virgin variant), and Cover D (1:25 Adriana Melo variant) — continuing the series' tradition of horror-movie-poster homage variants.
- Collected in Feral TP, Vol. 2: Cat Lady (ISBN 9781534328280), published March 12, 2025, which gathers issues #6–10.
- The broader Feral series exists in the same shared continuity as Stray Dogs and has been translated into French; the series received the 2025 American Library Association Outstanding Comics Award for Young Adults Series Honor Book.
- Rated T+ (Teen Plus); 28 pages, full color.
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