Posted in: Comics, Image | Tagged: feral, spoilers, Stray Dogs, Tony Fleecs, Trish Forstner

Big Silent Spoilers For Tomorrow's Feral #21, From Image Comics

Big Silent Spoilers for Tomorrow's Feral #21 by Tony Fleecs and Trish Forstner from Image Comics. You have been warned...

Kieron Gillen, writing about spoilers, said, "The thing you have to bear in mind as a creator is as much press as a story spoiler can get (including something being given away in Previews), a huge chunk of the comics audience don't follow everything. Or even anything. The first they see of a cover is the NEXT MONTH page." Remember that when we are talking about Feral #21 by Tony Fleecs, Trish Forstner, out from Image Comics tomorrow. And if you want to share such spoilers, maybe do it behind a spoiler warning…

Well, the "next month" page of the Image Comics series Feral #20, from January, is simply the cover to tomorrow's Feral #21, with the cat Ghost who cannot hear, "finger" claw to lips, expressing silence. The entire issue is wordless, a reference to the famous G.I. Joe #21 silent issue with Snake Eyes, which has been so influential over the decades. The issue has a variant cover to match. As well as an Invincible Battle Beast variant, and a retailer exclusive from Third Eye Comics. Well, Absolute Batman can't have all the retailer exclusive variant covers can it? Except that this one is based on Jock's Absolute Batman #15 cover, ah well, can't beat them, join them.

But the solicitation gives away a lot more. Even reading it is a spoiler. So to give you time to back away, a little precis. Feral is an ongoing horror comic series from Image, launched in March 2024 and created by Tony Fleecs and Trish Forstner, which follows three indoor house cats, Elsie, Lord Fluffy Britches, and Patch, who get lost in the wilderness during a nightmarish rabies outbreak that turns animals into rabid, violent beasts. Basically a feline zombie comic, the cats must navigate the dangers of the forest, avoid infection, with the mantra "Don't get bit. Don't get scratched. Don't become…Feral", and try to find their way back home without their humans to protect them. Ghost is their latest member. The story blends cute, Disney and Don Bluth-inspired anthropomorphic animal art with brutal horror elements, including graphic violence. It's described as The Walking Dead meets The Aristocats.

It comes from the same creative duo, Stray Dogs, which launched from Image Comics in 2021 with a similar perspective: a suspense thriller told from the dogs' point of view, described as Lady and the Tramp meets Silence of the Lambs, as a bunch of rescue dogs realise the truth about their new owner….

Stray Dogs is a more insular story, rather than the wider world of Feral, but there are clear crossover elements. These are beautiful, clever, weird and wonderful books, and were a hit when launched, became collectibles and still inspires that mindset. Feral #1 still sells for a tenner in decent nick, and $30 for the variant. Stray Dogs #1 sells for $25, $35 for the variant and $50 CGC 9.8. And while I see why Image Comics pitches them as the "X Meets Y" as I referenced above, for me, it is more like the original animated film of Watership Down in 1978, based on the 1972 novel, it was a massive hit. But it was when it became a regular Sunday afternoon teatime viewing on BBC 1 in the mid-eighties, it utterly traumatised a nation's kids in a good way. A loving Disney-esque portrayal of rabbits just living their life in the English countryside, and dealing with rabbit politics and the shadow of humanity, that turns into an absolute horror show of blood, guts, fear and pain, far more than say, Pink Floyd's The Wall, four years later.

The British Board of Film Classification gave Watership Down a U rating, for Universal, suitable for all, the kind of rating that all Disney animated films got back then, saying that "Animation removes the realistic gory horror in the occasional scenes of violence and bloodshed, and we felt that, while the film may move children emotionally during the film's duration, it could not seriously trouble them once the spell of the story is broken, and that a 'U' certificate was therefore quite appropriate." In the same year, Monty Python's Life of Brian was given an X certificate in much of Britain, restricted to 18-year-olds only. Pink Floyd's The Wall got an AA rating, restricted to 14-year-olds and over. All such ratings have changed since. And after complaints following a more recent TV airing, Watership Down is now a PG for "mild violence, threat, brief bloody images, language" although I have to say, there was nothing at all mild about that violence and the bloody images were not brief. Anyway, I digressed a lot, to give you spoiler-phobic folk a chance to back out, because I will be running the solicitation details from months ago that you may have forgotten and not read.  But maybe not as obvious as the solicitation for tomorrow's Feral 21, as we may have mentioned. Last chance to back out now. Because you remember those crossover elements I mentioned a couple of pages back?

FERAL #21 
(W) Tony Fleecs (A) Trish Forstner, Tone Rodriguez, Brad Simpson (CA) Tony Fleecs, Trish Forstner
NEW STORY ARC Like all good 21st issues… a SILENT INTERLUDE! Moosh the Pitbull is missing and only one cat can find him. As the mysterious GHOST searches for his canine friend, he discovers something that will change the world of FERAL forever! Don't miss out on this thrilling issue told through the POV of everyone's favorite hearing impaired feline. PLUS: A last page shocker that will make STRAY DOGS fans sit, stay, rollover and beg! (hint! hint!)

Yeah, we get the hint. So in tomorrow's Feral #21, at the very end, as Ghost traverses a place where animals get put down, as part of the pandemic response, someone calls to her.

Not that she can hear them, of course. Or even recognise them if she turned around. But long-time readers of Tony Fleecs and Trish Forstner will.

The Stray Dogs have been captured in the world of Feral, ready to be euthanised. It is possible that a few Stray Dogs fans, especially since the movie option, might want to pick this up, and subsequent issues. The FOC for Feral #22 is in a couple of weeks, and it comes out on the 29th of April. The next solicitations don't mention Stary Dogs specifically, but Feral #24 does talk about some "unexpected allies"…

• FERAL #22
  (W) Tony Fleecs (A) Trish Forstner, Tone Rodrigues, Brad Simpson (CA) Tony Fleecs, Trish Forstner
  THE CATS HAVE BEEN CAPTURED BY HUMANS! CDC scientists run tests on Elsie and the rest of the Pet City refugees but why? None of them are infected. Even worse, is it possible there is a MURDERER stalking the humans? After the shocking events of the last issue ANYTHING might happen. Don't miss out! $3.99 4/6/2026
• FERAL #23
  (W) Tony Fleecs (A) Trish Forstner, Tone Rodrigues, Brad Simpson (CA) Tone Rodriguez, Trish Forstner, Tony Fleecs
  Elsie and the cats must pull off a JAILBREAK from the CDC! But it's way harder than they thought. And do they even want to escape if there's a human SERIAL KILLER roaming the halls? Plus, someone still needs to rescue Moosh before he's PUT DOWN!
  $3.99 5/27/2026
• FERAL #24
  (W) Tony Fleecs (A) Trish Forstner, Tone Rodriguez, Brad Simpson (CA) Tony Fleecs, Tone Rodriguez, Trish Forstner
  The CDC experiments on the Bad Kind go HORRIBLY WRONG! Something terrible festers in the boiler room and ELSIE and the cats have to figure out how to speak Dog because MOOSH has to tell them something VITALLY IMPORTANT! Things look bad for the gang unless they can make some UNEXPECTED ALLIES!
  $3.99 6/24/2026

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