Shhh … we’re talking about Fight Club
The first rule of Fight Club is … do not talk about Fight Club. We’re going to break that rule, because there is now a sequel and it’s written in a completely different style than the original. Author Chuck Palahniuk teamed up with artists David Mack and Cameron Stewart to release a 10-part comic book that brings back Tyler Durden.
The first issue of Fight Club 2 hits shelves on Wednesday. Earlier this month, Palahniuk released a collection of short stories called Make Something Up: Stories You Can’t Unread.
On why he chose to bring back Fight Club:
I finally had the time to learn a new storytelling skill. I had about a year off, because my story collection was done. I was invited, kind of ambushed, at a dinner party by a bunch of comic people, including Brian Bendis and Matt Fraction. They really hammered on me about creating Fight Club 2 as a graphic novel, so I had the time and I had the peer pressure so, what the hell?
On how to write a comic book:
There’s so many different parts of that skill. As you see the two pages, the reader scans them all (to get) a general idea of what’s going to happen. The only moment you can surprise or shock the reader is when they turn the page. It’s called the page-turn reveal. So you’ve got to have a set up at the bottom of the right hand page, and you have to have a payoff at the top of the left hand page as they turn that page every time. It drives you crazy to pace a story so artificially!
On what his life has been like the past 19 years since Fight Club came out:
You know the biggest change, if I can be honest, is that both of my parents died. My father was killed in ‘99 and my mother died in 2009. I had to come to terms with how much of my performance was based on pleasing them and getting their approval and I had to find a way to motivate myself now that they were both gone.
On the sense of loneliness that his characters have:
So many of us think that if we can get money enough, we can kind of isolate ourselves in the country or in the penthouse, then we will be happy because we won’t be dealing with Sartre’s “other people,” and then when we do achieve that isolation, we realize we’ve never been more unhappy.
On the marketing of Fight Club 2:
I’ve been really pulled into the whole creative, the whole enterprise. I had to answer the letter columns. I had to write 200 haikus as Tyler Durden so those could be tweeted out gradually. I had to come up with all these little extras whenever there was a blank page, and I had to design a lot of the marketing things because this is supposed to be my baby…and that’s exciting.
Will there be a new movie?
There’s been interest, there’s also been some television interest — so people are just kind of holding their breath right now.
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