Cover Artist: David Mack
Chuck Palahniuk writes the sequel to Fight Club as a comic book. There has to be something highly ironic about that. What would Tyler Durden think? In this case, it works. Palahniuk doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. He just needs to show up. We’re picking up where we left off. Project Mayhem is history. After all the outrageous events from the hugely popular novel and movie, we find our main characters trying to live a normal life. Ah, and there’s the rub. Imagine it’s ten years later and Marla Singer has married Tyler Durden. Oh, he goes by “Sebastian” now and is very low-key.
A quick refresh, if you saw the movie years ago: The characters played by Helena Bonham Carter and Edward Norton got married! And they’ve got a kid now who is very disturbed. And Marla is quite dissatisfied, to say the least, with a docile and settled Tyler, er, Sebastian. If it weren’t for the pills, well, Sebastian might lose control. He might even go back to being the crazed man Marla once knew. And that’s okay with Marla.
This first issue sets the stage with a hot streak of conflict carried down the line by Marla. Artist Cameron Stewart nails the look of a woman on the verge of a breakdown. We see Marla twist and turn as she hungers for excitement only to see a neutered Tyler/Sebastian. Where’s the sex? The violence? The mayhem? Desperately, Marla tries to relive the old days by visiting support groups. One she seems to like is a group for those with Progeria Syndrome, severe aging. Marla tries her best but it’s just not the same.
It would have been very tempting to have gotten Cameron Stewart to go ahead with directly depicting the stars who made these characters such icons. Sure, I wouldn’t have minded seeing Edward Norton back with Helena Bonham Carter as they collide with Brad Pitt. That said, Stewart provides us with the next best thing. Marla may be his best out of the three of his takes on the characters. And the other two hold their own. Nothing like a woman scorned. This first issue belongs to Marla.
Of course, that’s not to say we’re not also seeing some pretty crazy stuff going on once Marla has done her part to light the fuse. No doubt, if you’re a fan of the novel and/or movie, or even if you’re completely new to all this, FIGHT CLUB 2 will appeal to you with its lively and quirky action.
So, like I say, Palahniuk is not reinventing the wheel. He was ahead of his time with the original Fight Club and we’ve all been catching up since then. Crazed consumer culture, a twisted value system, a mass of humanity all insular and selfish, it’s all on a high boil now. Fight Club 2 is on a high boil indeed.
FIGHT CLUB 2 #1 is a 32-page comic book, priced at $3.99, and is available as of May 27, 2015. For more details, visit our friends at Dark Horse Comics right here. Also be sure to visit the official FIGHT CLUB 2 website and the official Chuck Palahniuk fansite right here.
Also of interest:
The FIGHT CLUB 2 experience takes off on May 2 with a special Free Comic Book Day promotion you won’t want to miss. On Saturday May 2nd, Dark Horse Comics will debut one of the most anticipated comic book and literary events of the year with a FIGHT CLUB 2 story written by NEW YORK TIMES bestselling novelist Chuck Palahniuk, illustrated by Eisner Award winning artist Cameron Stewart and colored by award winning Dave Stewart. The Dark Horse Comics Free Comic Book Day Sampler includes a 14-page story that adapts the ending of the FIGHT CLUB novel (which fans will recall is different than the ending of the acclaimed film) and leads into the upcoming Dark Horse Comics FIGHT CLUB 2 comic book series. The first issue of FIGHT CLUB 2 will be available at comics shops, select book stores and digitally via the Dark Horse digital store and app on May 27th.
Dark Horse Comics has encouraged fans to further contribute to the mayhem with a guerilla marketing campaign utilizing the phrases “Tyler Durden Lives” and “Rize or Die” in order to win Easton Press limited, leather-bound editions of Palahniuk’s novels BEAUTIFUL YOU, FIGHT CLUB and SURVIVOR. Fans are encouraged to e-mail their photos and letters using the phrases “Tyler Durden Lives” and “Rize or Die” to: projectmayhem@darkhorse.com.
Awesome. I think it’s great that he has resisted the temptation to just use the likeness of those characters which made the movie famous. Because you want a comic of the film to be it’s own parallel universe. It’s hard to maintain a perfectly consistent likeness for known faces anyway. So I think it removes a particular level of distraction and asserts the comic as a story in it’s own right instead of being just a spinoff. You want that in a comic. For example, I always loved the different interpretations of the Wolverine character by different artists.
Yes, it does help to start out fresh. However, the likenesses can be a wonderful hook. If done right, they can be quite engaging as in Dark Horse Comics titles, Angel & Faith; and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Quite delightful and compelling work.
hello henry chamberlain its dennis the vizsla dog hay isnt the first rool of fite club not to tawk abowt fite club??? i think yoo hav broken it!!! uh oh now i hav too!!! forgit i sed ennything!!! ok bye
Dennis, I’m so glad you’re hip to the Fight Club credo. Well, it’s okay to talk about it, at least just a bit.