Feral #27 // Review
Elsie is being examined. She is a domestic cat. Chance and circumstances have found her to become solitary. She's being examined by a few non-domestic cats. They're wondering, perhaps if she might be sick. There's been a lot of sickness going around. And they know that they need to keep their distance. Nevertheless, she doesn't necessarily look like a threat. At least not initially. Not until she speaks. Elsie’s journey continues in Feral #27. Writer Tony Fleecs cotniues a tale of feline survival that is brought to the page by the art team of Trish Forstner and Tone Rodriguez. Color comes ot the page courtesy of Brad Simpson.
The observation is made that the domestic cat in question used not fierce. Clearly tame. Clearly domestic. Clearly quite soft. And yet it's not afraid of them. Why is it not afraid of them? Clearly, there must be sickness involved. Those who are sick have lost to the ability to feel fear. When Elsie starts talking, it’s understandable that they would be totally spooked and run away. It’s a dangerous sort of a situation out there and there’s no telling how dangerous she might be or what she might be infected with. So they run. And Elsie is on her own again...
Once again, it appears to be the case that the script is solidly, focusing on survival by virtue of community. Just as questions of community had a risen in the pet food, megastore of recent issues, so to our questions of community a concern in the wild area outside of town. This would seem to be a little bit repetitious. And indeed it is. However, with a different group of extended characters in the ensemble, it does gain a little bit of its own distinctive personality as the series continues.
Forstner and Rodriguez deliver quite a bit of passion, desperation, and emotion to the face of Elsie as she moves through the story. The wild cats are suitably sinister in appearance. There's a star contrast between them and the domestic cats. The matters of humans, however, feel a little bit less powerful. As it is the case that the illness has jumped to humans, there's a bit of a zombie feel going on in the story that doesn't quite fit the visual potential of us series that would be more centrally focused on the animals. And then there's the fact that humans being animals doesn't really hit the page in a way that feels quite as powerful as it could.
The rabid humans enter the picture as a new development. And though their first real appearance, here doesn't have the kind of impact that it could, the series does have a progression to it. There's a lot of repetition in the themes and the overall energy of the series. The creative team has done a pretty good job of making sure that it keeps moving forward, though. Even if things seem repetitious, they're doing so in a way that evolves every time familiar conditions arise again.
