It’s been. two days. The cats are getting hungry. They can’t seem to leave the home that had served them so well...in spite of the tyrannical cat lady who was treating them awfully. Now she’s dead, but she’s right in front of the door that could let them out of the place. They’ve tried to move her body, but it’s no use: she’s just too big for them to budge. Things are getting desperate in Feral #10. Writer Tony Fleecs reaches a particularly dark moment with the art team of Trish Forstner and Tone Rodriguez. Color comes to the page courtesy of Brad SImpson.

They’re all hungry. Haven’t eaten in a long time. There’s no way out of the house. There’s no pulling the corpse of the woman out of the way. Then one of them suggests...maybe the only way to survive is to eat the woman. Not all of them are going to have a very good time of it. Some of them are quite aware that she was sick. Those who weren’t completely comfortable with that sort of worshipped her as some kind of savior and they’re not going to be comfortable eating the woman either.

And then they suggested that they eat the corpse of the diseased woman who was taking care of them. THAT’S not exactly something that would have ended-up in The Aristocats. It’s weird because...on one level, the art style feels very, very Disney and everything, but I mean...it’s all pretty dark as things have been settling-in to the story over the course of its ten-issue run. Pretty dark stuff and it’s only getting darker in another extremely vicious sort of story that feels exquisitely sinister on a whole bunch of different levels. Very compelling stuff on a whole bunch of different levels.

Forstner and Rodriguez make the whole thing feel remarkably simple straight through. The cel-animated Disney art style simply moves down a dark and horrifying path without deviating at all from the traditional sort of a perspective on things. It’s kind of weird to see this kind of fidelity to the simplistic, clean-line style that wouldn’t look out of place in a kids’ cartoon...and then to have the darkenss of the story descend in around every edge of it all. Simpson’s colors continue to embrace the cel-aniated style with a very simple and horrifyingly sinister mood.

The darkness in the series continues to deepen. What had been relatively dark starting-out has gotten dark in a completely different way than might have been originally expected. As things continue there seems to be greater and greater tension. It’s goig to be intersting to see if Fleecs and company can keep increasing the tesnion without completely overwhelming the realistic grounding of the story. Things had come pretty close to being over-the-top with the devilish antagonism of the old cat lady, but they somehow managed to keep it feeling pretty realistic throughout. The latest turn of events could pose a bit of a challenge to the realistic grounding of the seris.

Grade: B