Zeb Larson reviews Nailbiter #7…
GUEST-STARRING BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS! Brian Michael Bendis comes to Buckaroo, Oregon looking to do research on a comic book about the ultimate serial killers! If you’ve ever wanted to see BENDIS running in the dark and screaming in fear, this is the comic for you!
The more you read Nailbiter, the more you realize that it’s not just a dark comic, but kind of a weird comic book too. Few serial killer comics could be characterized as light-hearted, but not every story about a serial killer has a whole chapter devoted to a real-life writer visiting to learn more about serial killers. The last two issues have been wildly tangential to the central mystery, but entertaining and funny. Brian Michael Bendis’s visit really brings home the fact that Joshua Williamson wants Nailbiter to be more than just another dark story about a murderer, even though murders are central to this series.
Brian Michael Bendis comes to visit Buckaroo as research for a new comic he wants to write about serial killers. While he doesn’t get a warm reception from the Sheriff, he’s not exactly chased away, and he’s left to sneak around town and learn what he can from the townsfolk. Bendis is hilariously aware of the clichés he’s stumbling into around town, starting with the Sheriff quoting Nietzsche at him. Bendis meets his number one fan, which may or may not be any kind of surprise, and he starts to understand that trying to understand serial killers can be a very bad idea.
This is an interesting issue because so little happens that has anything to do with the plot. Finch is still on lockdown with the new FBI agent in town, and Alice doesn’t appear at all. Even Sheriff Crane is only a peripheral character. The epilogue indicates that we’ll be back on to the main plot next issue, but it’s still a bold step for a writer to spend two issues just telling a fun story. It comes across as authorial self-confidence: Williamson knows that his story is compelling and his voice and direction are interesting, so he can take his time and tell an unconventional story. Bendis is sort of idiosyncratic in this issue, self-aware enough to perceive the stereotypes of the town he’s in but innocent enough to still be shocked by the more lurid aspects.
The tangent with Brian Michael Bendis goes beyond just being a humorous cameo of a well-known Portland author. It’s an opportunity for Williamson to raise an interesting question about how authors try to understand violence, especially the motivations that go into it. Without giving anything away, Bendis’ search for knowledge doesn’t go very well, and the message seems to be that delving too deeply into the question of “why?” is somehow dangerous. This idea is somewhat intriguing, but needs to be more fully explored in this book. Perhaps we’ll know more when Carroll wakes up; as it stands, I was unconvinced that trying to understand evil is a bad thing.
More interestingly, this issue also acknowledges that authors “kill” in a certain sense, especially in comic books where high body counts are frequently a staple of the genre. Nailbiter is certainly no exception to this, and a lot of these deaths happened fairly quickly and without much fanfare. Still, Williamson seems to be reminding his audience that and fellow writers that they have a responsibility to be mature in the way that they depict death. They have an unusual ability to present a sort of simulacra of death, in which we feel the emotions associated with mortality but without an actual death. Done poorly, this reinforces an uncaring attitude about death, something which can color your perception of death in the real world.
It might be paradoxical that a comic about serial killers, and a funny comic at that, would be critical of hyperviolence in media, but this issue raises some interesting points. Nailbiter is now a mature series, and its odd sense of humor and observations about violence are working well. Here’s hoping issue eight is here soon.
Zeb Larson
Originally published November 5, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
