Review: Fight Club 2 Issue 1

Sure, I’ve been looking forward to a few comics coming out. Secret Wars has sounded appealing, Old Man Logan is coming back, and the promos for Suiciders has made it part of the pull list; but the one that was at the top of the list for a while was Fight Club 2.

Title: Fight Club 2
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
SRP: $3.99

The first Fight Club is one of my favorite books. I’ve read it numerous times (about once every 2 years since it came out). I’ve owned a few different copies of the book, which end up getting lent out and never returning.

Early returns of the first issue were good. It set up the world of Fight Club 10 years after the closing of the book. Tyler is gone and the narrator goes by Sebastian. Sebastian is married to Marla and they have a son. They all just move through the motions of life.

Sebastian still finds remains of Fight Club and Project Mayhem – men giving him free stuff and calling him sir. He’s heavily medicated to keep his personality at the forefront.

Marla is unhappy with her marriage and realizes she wanted to marry Tyler and not Sebastian. She’s secretly going to help group meetings again to get back to her old life. She also reveals that she has been replacing Sebastian’s medicine with asprin.

Their son, who is 9, is making gun powder from dog crap.

It’s revealed that Sebastian’s shrink is hypnotizing him to release Tyler, who didn’t die at the end of the first book. Tyler is using 2 sessions a week to run Project Mayhem, setting up bombings and assassinations.

The book ends with Sebastian and Marla’s house going up in flames and leave a cliffhanger around the fate of their son.

Overall, the book was a good setup of what has happened in the previous 10 years. The story was well written and it feels that Chuck Palahniuk still has a feel for the characters.

The biggest negative for me was the art; initially, I felt Cameron Stewart’s art was almost too cartoonish and was disappointing. As the book went on, the art didn’t bother me as much; that might be because of the coloring of Dave Stewart. The colors are pretty distinct; much of Sebastian’s live is full of drab colors, while Tyler and the violence/explosions are more vivid and clear.

The cover by David Mack was beautiful; like most of Mack’s stuff, it was painted and the colors were pretty vivid.

Overall, the book gets a 4.5 stars out of 5; it’s brought us back to the world and set up the last 10 years. I’m expecting big things of the next issue.