How many of you enjoy listening to or watching True Crime podcasts? They are very well known, and serial killers are one of their favourite categories of criminals. People’s curiosity about the dark, deranged thoughts of those who murder without regret or thought is only reasonable.
Serial killers like Jason, Freddy, and even Hannibal Lecter have been featured in popular media. This film focuses on a serial killer who was featured in an Image Comics comic book series and is arguably considerably frightening than his contemporaries. Edward Charles Warren, also referred to as The Nailbiter, is this serial killer. You are in for a wild journey, so fasten your seatbelts. Oh, and be careful not to unintentionally chew your nails while watching this!
Exploring the comic book that delves into the darkness of the human psyche
The action takes place in Buckaroo, a small town in Oregon that has produced sixteen of the deadliest serial killers in history, most notably the lethal Warren. One of the Buckaroo Butchers, a group of serial killers with a base near Buckaroo, Oregon, is Edward Charles Warren, also known as Nailbiter. He is also the first of the Buckaroo Butchers to achieve national notoriety, which puts Buckaroo alongside him in the spotlight to the chagrin of the locals. The first episode of the series features NSA Agent Nicholas Finch arriving in Buckaroo at the invitation of FBI Agent Eliot Carroll, who is convinced he has discovered the truth about the town’s complicated history involving serial killers.
The first issue in the series opens with a shot of The Nailbiter biting the fingers off of one of his victims and the page tells us his sordid history. We learn that the Nailbiter was a serial killer whose modus operandi was both bizarre and gruesome. His method was kidnapping young and innocent men and women who had the bad, but not murder worthy, habit of chewing on their own nails.
He used to tie them up and hold them captive until their nails had grown back and then chew their fingers right down to the bone after which he would finally kill them. At the beginning of the series, he had been deemed responsible for 46 murders in the state of California alone. He was one active serial killer. He was arrested but released from captivity post this because the jury in his trial acquitted the maniac somehow.
The issue quickly jumps to three years later as NSA agent Nicholas Finch tries to commit suicide but is interrupted by a phone call from FBI Agent Eliot Carroll. Carroll tells him to come to Buckaroo, Oregon immediately because he had apparently figured out why the region bred so many monsters. Finch arrives and is quickly thrown into a world of murders, serial killers, secrets and closets full of very real skeletons along with proverbial ones. Most importantly, when he is unable to trace his good friend Carroll, he is taken to the house of The Nailbiter by the local Sheriff, Crane where he meets the infamous serial killer for the first time.
Buckaroo is a town teeming with murder and murderous intent, so it is not surprising that someone lights Carroll’s motel room on fire and Finch reaches just in time to save the notes Carroll had made, only to see a poor man being burnt to a crisp. He hoped it was not Carroll but realising that there was a good chance that it was in fact, his friend, he decided to track down whoever had committed arson at the motel. They learnt that the body was not Carroll’s, giving Finch hope that his friend was alive. However, that only deepened the mystery.
During the course of the story, we learn about all the other Buckaroo Butchers including The Crossbones Killer, fraternal twin murderers – The Terrible Two and The Blonde, to name a few. However, evil had not died with these horrible monsters and something continued to plague the town. Stores were set ablaze, more people murdered as Finch tried to make sense of all the sinister happenings.
When Finch became tired of playing games, he surprised Warren at his home in one of the most iconic scenes in the series. Warren was bound and tormented until he confessed. Warren first welcomed the physical assault, telling him that it would only enable him to embrace what he actually desired: violence. Finch, on the other hand, turned the tables and began chewing his own nails. Warren became enraged and agreed to reveal Buckaroo’s secret.
Like in many movies and TV shows, cops and serial killers have often teamed up to solve mysteries and catch other serial killers. The Silence of The Lambs, Hannibal, and so on, take your pick. It makes for an unlikely yet powerful and interesting dynamic and that is exactly what happens in this series as well. The Nailbiter and thus Finch teamed up to solve the disappearance of Carroll. However, they end up stumbling upon things they had not even imagined in their wildest dreams.
Finding Carroll is just as crucial as figuring out what’s wrong with Buckaroo. Parts of probable explanations appear throughout the series, but the pursuit is lengthy and laborious, taking both heroes and villains halfway across the country and back, and even spilling over into other horror comic book series. The town of Buckaroo unravels alongside the mysteries, ultimately exploding in a terrible symphony of fire and death.
In the end, it turned out that Morty the mortician had been the mastermind all along. We learn that the original goal of the visitors to the town settlement had been to figure out what turned people into psychopaths. That goal soon shifted from figuring out what caused it to creating their own, leading them to build an underground cave system with a temple that appeared to have a gauntlet of such horrific things that it would drive people to become the most heinous of murders – effectively increasing the numbers of the murderers one by one until it reached the insane number of 16.
The powers that be sought to develop their own killers, but in the process, they discovered a special ‘serial killer’ gene and developed a test for it, which turned out to be the real secret and how the FBI became involved in the case. Carroll had indeed been murdered and that closed the case.
Crane and her daughter Alice relocated to a calm Portland neighborhood once the rain had rinsed away the blood and ashes. However, that was not the end as the series returned in the year 2020 for another round of serial killer mayhem in The Nailbiter Returns – another must read!
Getting into the mind of Nailbiter
When it comes to serial killers, everyone wants to know how they stalked, captured and killed their victims and most importantly, WHY they did all of it. Well, here is all we know about Edward Warren. Let us start from the very beginning.
Warren met his next-door neighbour Rose Kenny, the mother of The Clown Car Killer – one of the Buckaroo Butchers, when he was only six years old. Rose told young Warren that she travelled to Buckaroo to stop the murderous desires that plagued her but instead she ended up handing them down to her son. She confided these details to Warren when the authorities uncovered his name and contacted the Kennys for questioning. She then asked him to return for cookies later. When Warren returned, however, he discovered their bodies limp in a murder-suicide fashion. Warren couldn’t take his gaze away from the bodies as he ate the cookies that she had made for him.
During his teenage years, Warren met Sharon Crane during a bonfire in high school and dared her to kiss him. He piqued her interest by telling her about some of the buried magnificence behind the Buckaroo Butchers. They started dating and finally attended prom together.
Soon after, his obsession with the Buckaroo Butchers pushed her away, as she found little tenderness from him. Sharon began chewing her nails on prom night out of habit after witnessing Warren also doing the same. Warren felt concerned and chased her down. He later left her a note apologising for having to leave her so quickly. He soon started his career as a serial killer and was quite successful at being one, killing over 60 people altogether. However, his streak was interrupted.
Authorities raided a home in California, where they discovered Warren chewing the fingers of unwitting victims. He was charged with murder, but 8 months later, he was exonerated of all charges. Carroll, a special investigator, couldn’t believe his eyes when he heard the verdict. He eventually told Carroll about his fascination in an interrogation room with Warren. He stated that everyone has a natural need to taste their own blood, which is why if you get a papercut, you put your finger in your mouth. He explains that in his experience, his blood tastes awful, but other people say it tastes nice. Out of inquisitiveness, he began tasting other people’s blood and became fixated with chewing on other people’s finger nails.
Thus, The Nailbiter was born. In the series finale, it is also seen that according to the test developed for detecting the serial killer gene, The Nailbiter tried to use it to exonerate himself and show that he was not at fault, he was simply a slave to his nature. However, the test backfired when he tested Negative. The people around him realised that Warren became a serial killer simply because he wanted to and enjoyed doing what he did. He wanted to be a Buckaroo Butcher so bad, to be a part of something much larger than himself. Thus, while he was definitely mentally ill, it is noted that he was not genetically predisposed to being a killer, he became one because he wanted to.
All of this makes him a truly disturbing killer with a complicated mind. He isn’t like the polished and suave serial killers we are often treated to in the movies even though he is tall, fair, blond and has blue eyes. He exudes an eerie aura and well, be careful if you’re a nailbiter!
A brief review of the comic series
Nailbiter is practically Hannibal Lector if one was to make a comparison. This comic is all about catching other serial killers by employing a serial killer. With strong horror aspects, this one will keep the brutality and gore going without going too far into familiar ground. Despite its strong resemblance to other stories, it has its distinct voice. It’s boundless horror with terrifying images, gore, imaginative torture, crazy scientists, eerie underground passageways, and more. It’s a nice one to pick up around Halloween to satisfy your gore hound cravings.
The vile, awful violence that characters inflict on one another is one element that Nailbiter does exceptionally well. There’s no denying that Nailbiter is a terrible book at times. Characters are stabbed, shot, burned alive, have their limbs hacked off, mouths sewn shut, fingernails eaten off, and are decapitated. There’s blood, limbs, and entrails all over the place. Thankfully, this isn’t the case on every page, or even most pages of the comic, but it is present, and as long as you’re prepared, Henderson and Guzowski bring the carnage to life on the pages of Nailbiter. Nailbiter doesn’t hide the fact that this is a very violent town.
While there is plenty of jump scares, writer Joshua Williamson and the art team of illustrator Mike Henderson, who is also a co-creator of the book, and colorist Adam Guzowski provide lots of human insight, truly amusing moments, and fantastic dialogue. Nailbiter is a fantastic piece of comic storytelling. The characters are all well-developed and filled out, and the plot moves along at a wonderful pace. Nailbiter is a narrative that is both filthy and terrifying at moments, as any good horror should be.
Nailbiter did end on somewhat of a cliffhanger when we saw Warren attack Sheriff Crane while she was in the shower. However, the continuation to that is out as well in the new series – Nilbiter Returns. Alice returns home to the horrors of the cliffhanger ending of the first narrative, in which Crane is ambushed by Nailbiter in the shower. She shoots him multiple times, but the determined killer is unaffected. Alice approaches Finch for assistance in locating her mother, who has since vanished. But, as Finch is well aware, the real Nailbiter is imprisoned, and it rapidly becomes clear that a slew of wannabes, or revived killers, are engaged in a bloody game devoted to the Buckaroo Butchers.
The Buckaroo Brawl is in full swing. When all of the main characters from the original series reconnect, they figure out what is causing these new Buckaroo Butchers to emerge from the shadows. Warren is also aware that they must return home. Even though they all tried to leave the past in the rubble of Buckaroo, it appears that’s exactly where they’ll discover the answers to the latest run of murders. Warren is once again the most wanted serial killer in comics, and even though he’s not salivating at the sight of chewed fingernails anymore, he’s still the nastiest.
The entire series and the latest sequel are definitely a must read for all horror fans. This series is definitely not for the faint of heart, but if you think you can stop your stomach from turning as you turn the pages of this comic, we highly recommend this murder-fest. What do you think of the Nailbiter? Let us know in the comments section below!