Feral #18 // Review
The guys in hazmat suits notice that the light is on in Pet City. There’s something strange about htat. They’ve got to call the CDC and make certain that someone got in there to run clean-up. The problem is: they report it, they might be sent-in for clean-up. So maybe they’re just going to skip it. Clean-up would involve being in a close space with a whole bunch of feral animals. Things are ugly and they could get uglier in Feral #18. Writer Tony Fleecs continues a dark post-apocalyptic pet horror serial with the art team of Trish Forstner and Tone Rodriguez. Color comes to the page courtesy of Brad Simpson.
Lucky’s in charge now. The stray dog named Moosh came-in like a force of nature in the middle of a fight. Lucky knew what the dog needed. Things got extremely bloody. Now Lucky and the strays are in charge. Thankfully the horrors of the Pet City cats’ cannibalism is behind them all, but there IS a problem with the food supply. All of the dry food is running out. Theoretically there would be a whole new food source if they could only get into the cans of wet food. As for now, even the dog food is starting to look like an option...
Fleecs continues a pretty brutal look at the lives of domestic pets gone feral in a big box pet supply story. It’s a pretty brutal situation all around and things are only getting worse. Fleecs slowly ratchets-up the tension on a story that feels like it’s about to spill completely out of control. Fleecs makes the tension felt with stunningly vivid nuance as the cats are forced to deal with so much that lies in the path of their survival. It’s a very tight rendering of survival that throws-in a few more obstacles that continue to breathe life into a big, sprawling action horror drama.
Forstner and Rodriguez closely follow the tension in Fleecs’ script. So much of the drama of the 18th issue in the series lies quite heavily on the shoulders of Lucky. He’s got his claws into a position of power, but it’s a very tenuous grip that he has on the situation and things could quickly grow beyond his anility to control the situation. Forstner and Rodriguez find ways of amping-up the tension on Lucky in a way that increase his sense of authority on th page without making that authority look to painfully obvious. Therre’s a subtle air of power that he’s carrying this issue that can be felt in the light quality oming to th e page as seen in Simpson’s cleer color work.
Things contineu to grow in intensity as the series approaches the second half of its second year. The cats have cme a hell of a long way and they’ve been in Pet City for a very, very long time. The Pet City era of the series has taken with it a great deal of power. It’ll be intersting to see where Fleecs and company take the series as it moves through the next few months.
