Zeb Larson reviews Nailbiter #16…
Nailbiter is up to its old tricks, by which I mean that we have another issue of stalling on plot advancement, boring pseudo-revelations, and action that doesn’t add up to much of anything. The last issue actually went somewhere, which got me hoping that we would finally see some forward movement. No such luck, unfortunately. I will be discussing spoilers ahead, so consider yourself forewarned.
Crane waits in Alice’s hospital room and talks to the mortician for a bit before Finch shows up. The bite marks on Carroll’s body don’t match Warren’s teeth, and the mortician reveals to the two that Carroll has woken up. It’s no good, though: the FBI has taken him to a secure location, and Finch is effectively arrested by Barker and led away. Elsewhere, a trio of trick-or-treating kids visits Warren’s house for a few scares. Warren corners one of them and scares him half to death, but he means him no harm and lets him go. Warren gets into a truck and drives away. The next morning, in Atlanta, a man is found brutally murdered and strung up, dressed like a devil.
While I always knew that it was possible that Carroll could wake up and we’d still have to wait to hear from him, I really hoped that it wouldn’t be the case. It’s a blatant lack of respect for the audience, especially given that nothing else that happens here is even interesting or amusing. The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is that Williamson introduced Carroll too soon and has just been juggling trying to compensate. At this point, Nailbiter has been playing keep-away with this plotline for a year, and only one of the issues has really moved the plot along. Books can get by on charm and atmosphere. The Fade-Out is a perfect example of that. But unlike The Fade-Out, Nailbiter just keeps circling around this mystery, assuming that Henderson’s talented artwork and Warren’s wackiness will keep us coming back. Unfortunately for the book, the latter has worn paper-thin.
Are we supposed to think that Warren is behind the killing in Atlanta? It feels like (yet another) red herring, just because I’m not sure how he would have gotten from Oregon to Georgia in a night and kill somebody ritualistically by dawn the next day. It being a false twist is not necessarily a bad thing. I’m hoping it’s another killer that will give the series a plotline to work with that isn’t “Is Carroll going to wake up?” Is the fact that the guy is made-up as a devil a reference to Devil’s Day, November 1st? Maybe. Hopefully there will be a reason to care in #17. I’ve basically run out of those for this series.
Rating: 5/10
Zeb Larson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=C_zu6XuI_g4
Originally published October 8, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
