'Fight Club 2': First Issue Of Comic Sequel Released; Why Did Chuck Palahniuk Return To Tyler Durden Story?

It has been over 15 years since “Fight Club” hit the big screen and nearly 20 since Chuck Palahniuk’s book was first published. However, for fans left wondering what came next for Tyler Durden after blowing up every major credit card company, the answer is finally here – albeit in yet another medium. “Fight Club 2,” a new comic series by Palahniuk, published by Dark Horse comics with art by Cameron Stewart, went on sale Wednesday to continue to cult classic story.

Palahniuk tweeted Wednesday to announce the release of the first of ten issues of the new series. See the tweet, featuring the issue one cover art, below:

According to the synopsis, “Fight Club 2” will pick up ten years after the events of the original story where the narrator (played in the film version by Ed Norton and Brad Pitt) lives a much more mundane life than the one he led in the original book and film. In fact, he is married and has a kid! He is also on medication to keep his dangerous alter ego, Tyler Durden, from re-emerging to take over his life. However, that might turn out to be unavoidable.

Speaking to The Verge, Palahniuk discussed how he ended up revisiting the material after all this time.

“One of my best friends, the thriller writer Chelsea Cain – who writes the ‘Heartsick’ series and the ‘Kick Lannigan’ series – she knows a lot of comic people here in Portland," Palahniuk said. “She threw a dinner party where she kind of set me up on a blind date with [comic writers] Matt Fraction and Brian Bendis and got them to really hammer on me about writing a comic. And right from the beginning, that comic was always going to be a sequel to ‘Fight Club.’”

Palahniuk also talked about how he was influenced by David Fincher’s adaptation of his own novel.

“I wanted to mimic certain tricks that David Fincher did in the film, where he acknowledged the medium – by making it appear the film was rattling in the cage of the projector, and pointing out changeover dots, and burning the film and splicing the film and breaking the fourth wall,” Palahniuk explained. “So right from the beginning I wanted to see some photorealistic things that would appear on the page, like rose petals and pills, that would obscure or occlude people’s faces; their expression. And also captions and dialogue, that kind of implied the inauthenticity of what was being said – To cut the importance of the written word on the page. And so that became one of the real-world tricks I wanted to do that were kind of a nod to David.”

What will Tyler Durden look like ten years later? Fans will have to read the comics to find out. The first issue of “Fight Club 2” is on sale now.