Comics
Comic Book Review: “Nailbiter” #10 – Marks A Weak Point For The Series
Reviewed By Torin Chambers. “Nailbiter” #10 shows the title has finally stumbled and produced a comparatively weak issue. 9 out of 10 isn’t a bad batting average, in fact it’s stellar, but not all stories are created equal. When stacked up against the incredibly high quality of previous issues this one stands out like a sore thumb. It’s a cramped and entirely too convenient tale that feels completely disconnected from the Nailbiter we’ve come to love. It’s muddled at best and incomprehensible at worst.
WRITTEN BY: Joshua Williamson
ART BY: Mike Henderson
PUBLISHER: Image Comics
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASE: February 4th, 2015
Picking up relatively soon after last issues infinitely unsettling cliffhanger. The children’s bus driver, Mister Crowe, has gone mad and intends to kill all of the kids with the twisted logic that he’s saving their souls, so then they can’t grow up to be serial killers. Sheriff Crane tries to calm the parents who’ve all gathered at the children’s school demanding answers and justice, and rightfully so.
Crane is soon joined by Finch and Agent Barker looking to help in any way they can. This is where the issue goes off the rails. The local priest is going off again as he always does which leads Crane to pressuring him into helping them. He says he might know a place where Crowe liked to pray. Then the next page they’re just there, the hunt for this guy took all of two pages and really one sentence. It’s all much too convenient, not to mention what was Crowe doing that whole time? Was he just patiently sitting there with a bus full of crying kids waiting for the cavalry to show up and try to stop him?
The location must be somewhere out of the way which means it can’t be a hop and a skip away from the school or people would’ve seen the bus. So now that the good guys are perfectly positioned to save the kids Crowe drives them into the lake. Obviously Crane and Finch dive in after to save the bus full of kids, but as they do so Agent Barker does absolutely nothing. This is an entire bus full of kids that just plunged into a lake so Crane and Finch could definitely use help, or not. Somehow they manage to save all of the kids in what seems like an incredibly short amount of time.
Then Crowe somehow manages to save himself but they leave one of the kids out there with him, why? Crane is clearly shown swimming away from the child, who’s out in the water about 5 feet from the psycho who just tried to drown all the kids. It doesn’t make any sense to me. This whole scene is a mess, a tangled mess.
The issue does pick up a bit after this and the ending is totally rad, but not good enough to save the issue. It’s a rare misstep from Williamson but one I’m sure he’ll bounce back from going forward. Nailbiter fans will still find some nuggets of fun here but this is will definitely be remembered as a black sheep.
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Torin Chambers is a rad dude from the nineties who does film stuff or something. Thomas the Tank Engine is his favorite transformer. Find him on Twitter @TorinsChambers
Comics
‘You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive’ – IDW Dark’s Next Horror Comic Will Make You Question Reality
Five friends. Four houses. One perfect life. Bloody Disgusting is excited to exclusively announce You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive, a brand new horror comic from IDW Dark.
From Eisner-Nominated writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, and rising horror artist Heather Vaughan, You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive is described as a “paranoia-laced, socially-conscious, horror mystery that will leave you questioning reality, and reveal that this crafted world is more of a nightmare than the idealistic dream they were expecting.”
Phoebe Joplin has never questioned the world her parents built: a secluded community where she and her friends were raised to be smarter, stronger, and better than anyone else. No distractions. No dangers. No secrets. Until the night of their graduation.
When one of them dies under impossible circumstances, Phee starts to pull at the edges of her perfect life—and what she finds is something far more terrifying than she ever imagined.
Because this place isn’t a sanctuary. It’s a cage. And no one who discovers the truth ever leaves it alive.
Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing (Batman – One Bad Day: Clayface, Star Trek: The Last Starship) co-write the upcoming IDW Dark horror comic, featuring art by Heather Vaughan.
Jackson Lanzing said in a statement to Bloody Disgusting, “You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive is in many ways a spiritual successor to our last creator-owned horror, The Principles of Necromancy – a dive into the promise and consequence of playing god with the blood of innocents. But the Hivemind book this reminds me of most is Clayface: One Bad Day. This is a deeply human story with intensely raw emotions – five best friends and their five mysterious parents, tearing one another apart for the promise of some impossible glory that’s waiting just beyond their darkest actions. We’re thrilled to be bringing this story to life with our long-time partner in crime, editor Heather Antos, at IDW Dark – and we’re particularly excited to give our Clayface fans a new, brutal and emotional horror made just for them.”
Adds Collin Kelly, “We’re deconstructing a feeling that seems universal these days; our elders have a death grip on their power, without any intention of giving it up to the generations that come next. YNLTPA is about growing up with the limitless potential of the future… and realizing how much it’s a lie we’ve been fed to keep us under the yoke of the past. Bringing this brutal experience to life is our artist and co-creator, Heather Vaughan, who brings an incredible amount of humanity to our cast. But it’s in our youthful leads that Heather’s art really shines – you are going to fall in love with these young people, even as they go through the worst experience of their lives. What we’ve all crafted together is going to be tragic, painful, but above all else, sincere – with a future so uncertain, there’s only one thing we can trust: you’ll never leave this place alive.”
“Some horror stories are about monsters in the dark. YNLTPA is about realizing the monsters raised you,” previews Senior Group Editor Heather Antos. “Working with Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly on this series has been a dream in the darkest possible way. They’ve built a story that’s layered, brutal, and deeply emotional, and every issue gives artist Heather Vaughan opportunities to push the art into places that feel both haunting and deeply personal. Some horror comics will keep you up at night…this is one that will stick with you for years to come.”
The first issue of You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive goes on sale October 14, 2026! Make sure to pre-order at your local comic shop by September to guarantee a copy.
Exclusively check out the various covers for Issue #1 down below.
IDW Publishing’s horror imprint IDW DARK features comics like A Quiet Place: Storm Warning, Smile: For the Camera, The Exorcism at 1600 Penn, Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees, The Twilight Zone, Event Horizon: Dark Descent & Event Horizon: Inferno, and more.
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