Drugs or Slugs In The Sequel To Fight Club

by Vince Brusio

If you’ve seen the movie Fight Club, you’re already primed for the sequel Fight Club 2 #1 (MAR150014) from Dark Horse Comics, written by Chuck Palahniuk. But should you not be familiar with the original work that shouldn’t discourage you in the least because Dark Horse Editor-In-Chief Scott Allie explains the premise to this new comic book series is one that should be familiar to many readers: it is youth gone wild, and the danger of an adrenaline rush.

Fight Club 2 #1 (MAR150014) is in comic shops May 27.

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PREVIEWSworld: Why a Fight Club 2 #1 (MAR150014)? What was the catalyst for the sequel?

Scott Allie: Chuck was looking for a new challenge, and busting into a whole new medium appealed to him. I assume it has a lot to do with living in Portland. He got to know Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConnick and Brian Bendis, and they encouraged him. He’d been to Comic Con, and saw a vibrant audience that his work would speak to. Tyler Durden has stuck with Chuck in a lot of ways—Tyler and Fight Club are a cultural touchstone that blew a lot of minds, and continues to speak to people. So, for Chuck, he comes back to the character twenty years later with a much different life experience, and living in a culture that’s changed a lot, which he can use Tyler to speak to.

PREVIEWSworld: Do readers need to know about the first storyline before this one? What primer should they have on hand? Or is it even necessary?

Scott Allie: Some familiarity is probably required, yeah. The sequel is all about the main characters from the original. You don’t need to remember the ins and outs, but the basic idea of the narrator—who calls himself Sebastian now—with an alter ego, Tyler Durden, who he thought was a completely separate, independent person. In the guise of Tyler, he started a militant men’s movement in reaction to a culture he felt alienated from. In the end of the novel, as opposed to the movie, Sebastian is prevented from killing himself by Marla Singer, accompanied by members of the various medical support groups that Sebastian and Marla had attended under false pretenses. The sequel picks up years later, when Sebastian and Marla have a young son, and Sebastian’s been using pills to suppress “Tyler."

PREVIEWSworld: If we look at the interior page supplied in the March PREVIEWS, we see the quote “What’s the worst that can happen?” How does that page represent the tone of the first issue?

Scott Allie: Neither Marla or Sebastian have a lot to be optimistic about. Sebastian assumes that the worst thing that can happen is for Tyler to get loose again. For Marla, there’s an even worse fate …

PREVIEWSworld: If you had to describe the premise of the Fight Club 2 #1 (MAR150014) to an audience that doesn’t know this is a sequel, what would you say? How would you make them “get it”?

Scott Allie: Here’s a guy whose most exciting days are behind him, which is a good thing, because he would’ve got himself and everyone around him killed. He's taking medication to be "satisfied" with the boring, repetitive nature of modern life, but the medication distances the best part of him from his wife and child, and erodes every relationship with the people he loves.

In your twenties you want to be that exciting, dangerous guy, but once you’ve had a taste of your own mortality, you know that guy will destroy everything you have. Everyone else loves that guy our hero used to be, though, and his greatest fear is that that guy could come back any minute. That’s a pretty relatable concept, and Chuck pushes it to a bizarre, psychological extreme.

PREVIEWSworld: What was the most rewarding aspect of working on this book for Dark Horse?

Scott Allie: Looking at comics with fresh eyes. Chuck’s an experimenter, a formalist, a creative risk taker. We put together a great team for this book, and we got everyone together to talk about what the book can be. Reading Chuck’s prose, comparing it to the Fight Club scripts, trying to figure out how to apply his aesthetics to this art form has caused me to look at everything I’m doing a little bit differently. It’s liberating, it’s exciting.

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