2000 AD invites new readers to jump aboard and visit the world of Dan Abnett and Rich Elson’s Feral & Foe. On September 27th, Rebellion will publish 2000 AD Prog 2351, one of the long-running magazine‘s periodic new-reader-friendly jumping-on issues comprised entirely of the first chapters of brand-new stories. Among the crop of tales included in the new issue is the beginning of the next arc of Feral & Foe, Abnett and Elson’s lightly satirical dark fantasy story. Feral & Foe follows Wrath and Bode, who were both conscripted into the Last-of-all-Wars and forced to fight for what turned out to be the losing side. Now, to survive, they’ve agreed to hunt their fellow losers for the winning side, and they’re not thrilled about the situation.
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Though this is the third installment of Feral & Foe, it begins an entirely new story for Wrath and Bode in a previously unexplored region of their world (Rebellion did collect the first two installments into a single trade paperback released in January, for those who want to go back to the very beginning). ComicBook.com had the opportunity to ask Abnett and Elson a few questions, via email, about Feral & Foe‘s return.
Jamie Lovett, ComicBook.com: Feral & Foe is returning in one of 2000 AD‘s jumping on issues. What do newcomers to the magazine need to know about the series going into this new chapter?
Dan Abnett: Not really anything, because we always try to recap the characters, setting and situation every time. But basically, it’s a rather dark fantasy world where the stereotypical ‘great war against the evil dark lord’ is over, and the bad guys lost.
So, the premise is ‘what happens after the end of any epic fantasy novel?” In this bright new age where the forces of light triumphed, any remnant or survivor of the losing side – the monsters, the ogres, the undead and so on – are declared “Feral and Foe” and hunted down to extinction. The only way to survive this is to change sides, legally accept the ‘special writ’, and become ‘Foetakers’, which is to say poachers turned gamekeepers.
Our down-on-their-luck heroes – Bode, a low-level ‘malchemist’ or magician, and Wrath, a ‘dark elf’ warrior – are obliged to do just that: hunt down their own kind, using their specialist insider knowledge, or face execution. It’s a dirty job and they’re not keen on it. And neither one of them is ‘outright evil’ – we’ve come to understand that, largely through no fault of their own, they ended up on the wrong side in the war.
Rich Elson: There’s a bit of set up near the beginning that deals with what got our characters to this point in their story, but we’re pretty much charging full steam ahead into a new environment with a new bunch of characters to accompany the main duo. Let’s face it, everybody else that they’ve taken up with promptly ended up on the unpleasant end of a sharp piece of metal, so we need to get fresh and interesting cannon fodder … sorry, ‘supporting cast’ in as soon as possible.
For returning Feral & Foe fans, what will they find familiar about this story, and what will be different from the last outing?
DA: This new story, “Bad Godesberg”, finds them as part of a Foetaker team charged with escorting a strange magical artefact to a ‘magical research centre’ for examination. And by ‘magical research centre’, I mean an ancient, haunted citadel. Naturally, things are not right in Godesberg, and our heroes soon find themselves trying to break the malign curse before everybody dies. Horribly. With no saving throw.
RE: Bode and Wrath, the two principal characters, remain the focus. I love a good odyssey, so really enjoyed the itinerant nature of the previous stories, but F&F’s latest adventure pretty much takes place in one location: a walled city with a pressing infestation problem.
Q: Part of the fun of Feral & Foe is how it subverts established fantasy tropes: cursed swords, D&D party compositions, etc. What elements of fantasy are you playing with this time around? Or is it a little less specific this time?
DA: I think gentle subversion has always been the aim of the series. It’s not meant to be parody or satire… it’s more of an homage to Tolkien and to Dungeons and Dragons, and any other reference point you care to mention. In fact, old school, homebrew, dice-and-paper fantasy RPG, if that can be a genre. Feral & Foe is more of a friendly, perhaps respectful, tease.
Rich and I love the post-Tolkien fantasy world tropes from which almost everything derives, and we wanted to find a slightly different take, right from our starting premise, which was ‘what would it be like to be an Orc in Middle-earth after Sauron lost’? This is meant to be the golden age, but it doesn’t feel like it if you backed the wrong horse.
Feral & Foe is a story of antiheroes trying to make amends, and trying to scrape a living in a “happy ever after” that was not meant for them. In this particular tale, we’re specifically playing with the cliche of the ‘dungeon crawl’ – a single location loaded with monsters and strange secrets, and an oddball party trying to survive and find a way out.
RE: Dan has peppered in a few recognizable D&D tropes (with a twist). If I need to know anything about D&D lore I just ask my mate Dave; he’s well up on all of that stuff and has been an invaluable help on every series of F&F. My main contribution is a character, largely inactive throughout most of the tale, that is based on a figure from Jewish folklore; so you can probably guess where that is going. 😊
Q: Given that Feral & Foe deconstructs the fantasy genre, to an extent, how has the recent boom in fantasy adaptations (the D&D movie, and seemingly every streaming service having a big-budget fantasy series or two) affected your approach to the series, if at all?
DA: Well, it helps a lot, because audiences seem to have a growing appetite for this sort of thing. And the D&D movie you mentioned proves that the game, and others like it, have become more mainstream, not just in terms of content and style, but also in terms of what the player experience is like.
Right from series one, we’ve made lots of sidelong ‘jokes’ about things like monster types and character classes, offering our own invented analogies for such things – beast-men are ‘Wartauri’, magic-users are ‘malchemists’, halflings are ‘hunchkin’, for instance, and though Wrath is obviously a ‘dark elf’ she never actually gets called that. We have our own terminology, and readers familiar with the genre are in on the joke, but now a much wider audience is in on it too.
We were working on this story before the D&D movie came out, so it may look, in places, like we’re deliberately mocking the film. But that’s just an inevitable coincidence. And given the movie’s light-hearted and playful tone, it’s more like the movie is satirizing D&D… and we’re presenting a more serious take. The irony!
RE: My genre intake being almost exclusively made up of nasty and violent horror and martial arts films, I’ve not seen any of them, but I can confidently say that F&F is far better than any of the other takes currently out there. 😊
Q: There were some impressive-looking beasts, creatures, and villains in Feral & Foe previously (the wyrm stands out in my mind). I know you probably don’t want to give too much away, but what are you most excited about drawing in this new volume?
DA: Oh, there are lots of monsters in this one. Big and small. The series is, more than anything, a vehicle for Rich’s wonderful art, giving him a chance to design and invent and draw whatever comes to him. So sometimes I’ll suggest something, or ask for a particular beast, but sometimes he’s come up with an idea, and I’ll eagerly find a place to use it. I suppose, in that respect, we’re a (small) party of adventurers, combining our abilities and working together to gain XP.
RE: I would be more than happy to spend all day, every day, drawing monsters. I get plenty of opportunity to draw hordes of the things working on F&F. This series has a bucket load of interesting critters – so long may it continue.
DA:
Of course, I can’t make Wednesday night, so how about a week Thursday…?
2000 AD Prog 2351, featuring the return of Feral & Foe, goes on sale on September 27th.
