Elsie is awake. She’s aware that something isn’t right. She and her family have found a nice, warm space filled with strays who are all being looked after by a kind woman. Elsie knows that something’s wrong, though. She’s going to try to call everyone’s attention to it in Feral #8. Writer Tony Fleecs continues a deeply engaging story of a group of cats looking for safety that is brought to the page by the art team of Trish Forster and Tone Rodriguez. Brad Simpson handles the color in another issue that. Feels like the darker end of old cell-animated Disney feature film art.
Elsie’s convinced everyone is safe. So why is she being awakened by a ghost who is telling her to get moving? She’s got a bad feeling about the place. Lord is happy and safe, but Gigi doesn’t seem to want to listen to the fact that there might be some kind of danger int the cozy, foul-smelling confines of an apartment populated entirely by cats. Something is definitely wrong, but Elsie’s going to have difficulty expressing it to a group of well-fed cats who have been safely rescued from all of the dangers outdoors.
Fleecs brings the strays into contact with a portion of an adventure that’s been around in Eric adventure stories for quite some time. The heroes are pulled in out of the danger to find a place that should in theory be a perfectly comfortable place. However, there's perhaps even greater danger in letting ones guard down in a place that's obviously a little bit too good to be true. Once again--Fleecs manages to bring elements of heroic adventure fiction perfectly in line with a very earthbound and perfectly natural story of cats who just happened to be able to have complex emotions and communicate in perfect English. The anthropomorphic is at a minimum and does a beautiful job of creating a very distinct and very fascinating adventure story.
The art team could have done more to make things seem very bright and shiny and sanitary on the surface. That would've caused more of a sense of darkness around the edges as Elsie’s might have seemed slightly paranoid. However, they are being very realistic around the edges of the anthropomorphizing of the cats. And human eye can see the apartment and know that it is the domain of a cat hoarder. There's no question about it. It is so completely obvious. And that makes the list list contentment of so many of the cats seem that much more tragic. The decision to make it look every bit as squalled as it would keep it firmly grounded in a heartbreaking kind of realism.
Fleecs and company do a really good job of keeping that balance between perfectly normal realism and heroic adventure fiction in a dark world. It’s something that wouldn’t ever have made it onto the big screen with Disney, but the quality of the art makes it look like it could have done. It’s dark and sinister stuff that doesn’t rely on the cheap contrast between wholesome cartoonishness and gratuitous darkness to make its impact the way so many others have in the past.
