After a successful hunt with his mate, a male fox is captured by the “two leggers” and thrust into captivity. There, he faces dangers more insidious than the simple eat-or-be-eaten laws of the forest: complacency, fear of the unknown, pack mentality, and loss of identity. Fox's struggle to remain unbroken and return to his home and his love makes this standalone graphic novel an allages fable in the tradition of Kipling's The Jungle Book. Gorgeously rendered in a classic pen and ink style, the drawing is reminiscent of the Golden Age of children's book illustration, and its delicacy is in contrast to the characters' (a friendly blue jay, a philosophical chimp, and a gas-lighting dog) streetwise patter. Created by underground cartoonist and fine artist Guy Colwell (Inner City Romance), this instant classic is a metaphor for incarceration, and a meditation on masculinity.

• TPB
  8/20/2023