Fight Club 2 #5 Review
How/ Why does it exist?
The writer of Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk was coerced into continuing his fight club Novel in comic by a fellow novelist Chelsea Cain and known comic writers Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConncik and submitted the idea to Dark Horse Comics with the art work to be done by Cameron Stewart in order to introduce a light colour tone and a sense of realism with each panel and make it darker as the story goes on into detail throughout its 10 issues and Chuck Palahniuk has already announced that he will be continuing the story in Fight Club 3.
This was all for the best as said in an interview that Chuck always wanted to return to the Fight Club storyline as he has referred to it as his best thriller and that revisiting these characters would be like bringing back an old friend and thus he attended a dinner in hopes of getting help from other comic writers in the business.
Storyboards and Themes
The first Fight Club was originally a book depicting the life of a Man simply known as The Narrator (now known in the comic Fight Club 2 as Sebastian) and is depicted as depressed and suffering with insomnia. In Fight Club 2 we learn that the antagonist Tyler Durden is a separate personality that stems from Sebastian and everything he lacks within himself.
Within the first novel Tyler is shown as capable and free of really anything and does anything really just for the sake of doing it in his best interests. In the comic Fight Club 2 (which is still going on) it starts 10 years prior right after the original with Sebastian who now has a family and the story is told from the restrained perspective of Tyler as he sits in the subconscious of Sebastian as Sebastian continues his dysfunctional relationship with his wife along with falling into a mundane routine until one day his wife replaces his medication and brings Tyler back and in doing so Tyler re-emerges and causes chaos, not just on a scale of fight club, but on a global scale as he takes control of extremist groups and rebuilding fight club worldwide.
The comic goes on to expand Tyler’s history and show that he had been around before Sebastian even became aware of him. The story changes from its original theme as it is now a fight for control with Sebastian losing and questioning whether or not he will stay, while Tyler uses every chance in order to kill Sebastian once and for all.
The themes of this comic go into many aspects that I was able to discover once I got the full scope of the story as the actions done by the group on the art gallery in number 5 were all on the orders of Tyler, as that could show some form of dedication or even loyalty to this dark cause.
One theme is the reflection of one’s self as not just one person, but also as another and the on-going fight for control which is presented in Sebastian’s and Tyler’s struggle with Tyler starting to come out as the victor, also the art works representation of realism such as the themes of psychology in the art work as the 5th issue’s cover represents in the picture Sebastian being swallowed and trapped within his subconscious and the hour glass representing he has not much time left.
All and all the title cover’s art style is slick and flexible which can also represent the tangibility of the human psych. And finally the dark tones represented by through the 5th issue such as people at war and the dark tones represented through drugs, which allows the reader to see the darker tones of people in the world which is what separates Fight Club from many comics as it has a level of realism.
