Feral vol. 3: Nine Lives

Vol. 2 ended with the main cast trapped in a car that had just crashed with its driver nothing more than a smear on the pavement.  What’s more is that Patch, still infected after the events of vol. 1, had just found them again.  Things seemed bad back then, but Elsie, Gigi, Lord, and the rest are about to find out that they can always get better as new arrival Lucky shows them.  He’s as cool a cat as they come and he’s got a plan to make everyone happy:  Get into Pet City.  It was haven for pets before the outbreak and it’s still secure from the outside.  All they have to do is just find a way in through all the crazies.

That’s only the first half of the volume and writer Tony Fleecs does a good job setting things up, introducing Lucky, and crafting a tense entry sequence with co-artists Trish Forstner and Tone Rodriguez.  Once they’re inside, however, things take on a much more familiar tone.  We don’t get quite the same brand of cultish shenanigans we saw in the previous volume, but it’s really close.  There’s also the feeling here that the cats are being portrayed more as small, furry humans with how those final two issues shake out.  Particularly with the love triangle that develops between Lucky, Gigi, and Elsie.

Of course, if they were actual humans the big reveal on the last page would be absolutely horrific and quite possibly beyond the pale for a lot of readers.  As these are all cats, you’re more free to marvel at just how messed up things are and wonder how much worse they’re going to get in the next volume.  Which, sure, I’d like to see the creative team try to top themselves after what they’ve done here.  I’m more than a little concerned that we’re already recycling plots three volumes in, so I’m left wondering if Fleecs has a larger plan for this series or if we’re just going to keep running through familiar horror tropes (with cats) until diminishing returns kicks in.