Chuck Pahlaniuk's Fight Club 2 has begun. For those of you who're completely stupid, he's the author who wrote the book that the movie Fight Club is based on. Fantastic movie, and fantastic book. Fight Club 2 is in a comic book format, with art by the excellent Cameron Stewart.
Fight Club has certainly ascended from its small cult sized fandom into iconic Pop Culture. It's extreme relevance to the lifestyles that people lead, it's slow and steady build to a chaotic climax, and the extremely satisfying ending make me wonder if it really needs a sequel. When it was first announced, I was extremely worried that Pahlaniuk was cashing in on its sudden popularity. Fight Club was not received well when it came out, and it became popular only when David Fincher became popular (mostly).
Well, issue 1 came out last week, and while its the logical next step story wise for Fight Club (a mundane family setting), there are several problems that set it aside from the movie.
First, "Sebastian" knows about Tyler, so the dual identity becomes more difficult to play with for Pahlaniuk. He handles that pretty decently though. He incorporates the right amount of comic book craziness that would never work in a novel. But the major problem is the pacing. Comicbooks by nature are faster than an average text novel. But this book felt too fast. Sebastian's life is thrust in front of you, as is Marla's, and then suddenly there's Tyler, and then explosions. Another problem is some sections feel slightly rehashed.
It's still really good though. Any fan of Fight Club definitely oughta be reading it. And the script is often delightfully vague. So in spite of the hasty pacing it still requires a little bit of careful reading for proper comprehension.
Read it. Or don't. It won't make a difference to your love for the original thing either way. But it's worth checking out.
