Zeb Larson reviews Nailbiter #15…
A shocking death unlocks the secrets of Buckaroo!
After a lot of waiting and teasing, Nailbiter has finally given some big answers. It has done so while returning the series to its winning formula: macabre humor, gruesome violence, and enough clues to give us a fair chance to speculate (or maybe it’s enough rope to hang ourselves with). The group in the pyramid has to try and evade the Buckaroo Butcher while carrying Alice to safety. In the process, one of them has to make a sacrifice to help the others get out. I will be discussing spoilers in this review, so consider yourself forewarned.
Warren, Finch, Crane, and the wounded Alice try to evade the Butcher and make their way out. While they temporarily lose him, Warren volunteers to stay behind, but before he goes off he tells them to investigate Dr. Glory and “Project White Chapel.” Finch, Crane and Alice narrowly make it to the surface while Warren is captured by a shadowy figure, who reminds Warren that he warned him not to say anything. Back above ground, Crane lets loose a bombshell and reveals that Alice is her daughter, while Finch is arrested. Meanwhile, back at the hospital, Carroll has finally woken up.
There are some odd questions from the action in this issue. For example, why can’t Finch and Crane manage to hit the Butcher at close-range after practically emptying their pistols at it? It’s not exactly a small target, and even if it had some kind of bulletproof armor in the costume, it would still be stunned. Those little things aside, I’m glad that Nailbiter has brought back some of its really black sense of humor: watching the Butcher hunt under multiple groups of dead bodies for the group is a gem. Likewise, watching the FBI agent slowly lose her marbles and fantasize about killing people is pretty funny, in part because it’s only a matter of time before she snaps.
And finally, after all of this time, Warren has offered up a clue that actually means something. Before going off to do the heroic thing, he tells the group to look into “Project White Chapel.” Whitechapel is of course where Jack the Ripper committed his murders in London. It stands to reason that Buckaroo is home to a research project designed to create serial killers. Or maybe it was designed to cure them, but it has now backfired horrifically, or is even using the various killers as test subjects. This likely eliminates the supernatural explanation from the book. Rather, Buckaroo is just a way to screen candidates. That’s my pet theory for the moment.
Of course, now that Carroll has awoken, answers can’t be too far away. I hesitate to say that this was entirely worth the wait, but I’m feeling really good about this book again. This was the strongest issue in a while.
Zeb Larson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k_v0cVxqEY
Originally published August 5, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
