Fight Club 2 #2

Fight Club 2 #2
Released by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: June 24th, 2105.
Written: Chuck Palahniuk
Art by: Cameron Stewart
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Picking up where the first issue left off, we know that 'Marla's been cutting her husband's meds so she can cheat with Tyler.' Suburban life hasn't been all that kind to Sebastian. Or more accurately, he hasn't taken to it the way some do. Last issue, the house went up in flame. The fire inspector said arson, their son with it. They cope, with some help from prescription drugs, but the insurance company is curious as to why a policy was taken out on the kid's life so soon before the fire and at such a large amount.

The F.B.I. get involved and they ask Sebastian a lot of questions about his father. We flashback to his childhood, we see a fire, it starts to make sense. Both his parents died… in two separate fires. But the fire marshal suspects a med student named Raul Kensington Seymour was the one that died in the fire, not their kid. Mr. Durden had something to do with this.

Sebastian hops a bus, he goes home to a familiar looking rundown old house, or at least what's left of it. We flashback to his past, we learn about his dad's many weddings and see a familiar looking guy there talking to him. He's a younger version but we know who he is. The next morning Marla admits what she's done, about the meds, about Tyler, and Sebastian knows what he has to do. If they want to find their kid, she needs to hit him as hard as she can…

Palahniuk builds nicely over what he laid down in the first issue. Yeah, there are a few moments where this ties into the original Fight Club that feel a little forced and a little 'hey look, remember how much you liked that story?' for their own good but for the most part, this works quite well. The flashbacks to Sebastian's childhood help to flesh out the 'who, what, where and why' that has made him who he is and while Marla isn't getting nearly the character development he is, we don't need that… yet. This is only the second issue, after all. We'll probably get there.

Cameron Stewart's art again suits the story nicely. Pay attention to the detail in the book and you'll get more out of it. There's a lot of little bits tucked away in the panels here that you might not notice at first but, once you do pick up on them, help to make sense of where Palahniuk is going with this. Stewart draws his lines with an appropriately sketchy style but the detail is there. The coloring, courtesy of Dave Stewart, is good here too. It helps to flesh out the artwork nicely and again there are details in that aspect of the book that are worth looking for too.

We're two issues in and I still say Fight Club didn't need a sequel, but at this point in the game we are at least getting a good read out of it. We'll see where things go in the coming months, obviously, but this is off to a very good start.