Fight Club 2 #8

Fight Club 2 #8
Released by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: December 23rd, 2015.
Written by: Chuck Pahalniuk
Illustrated by: Cameron Stewart
Purchase From Amazon

If you're not already, get caught up. Otherwise you'll be clueless because maybe not so surprisingly, things are complicated. Tyler's got a plan to get rid of disease and bring about world peace. Marla figures their kid is in the castle fortress where he's being groomed to replace a certain someone but soon enough, there will be a family reunion.

Chuck Pahalniuk sits around a table with some women. They ask him if Tyler is an infectious mental virus but resolving him would be like trying to “remove Santa Clause from the cultural landscape.” Cut to the Magic Wand Foundation, they're routing 747's all over the place to get those sick kids where they need to be. They're doing their best to meet the demand and it's causing a bit of a traffic jam up there in the skies. If the airports are full, some are just going to have to skydive their way in. And some of them do. Some of them with assault rifles and the skills to take out a small army of heavily armed guards littered about the castle grounds.

They're looking to get the kid out of there, Marla's way - and they're willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to do that if they need to. Marla gets a call from the 'best fuck' of her life, and then Sebastian realizes he nodded off. Time to give civilization a reboot.

All good things must come to an end and we're now eight issues into this thing. As such, the different threads are starting to wrap up and Tyler's plan is becoming more obvious and more insane with pretty much every page. Like the three simple words on the cover state - Ideas Breed Us. And there are some rather intense ideas at work here. Call it a conspiracy, call it terrorism, call it the id laid bare but whatever it is that Pahalniuk is getting at here, it's as ridiculously entertaining and often hilarious as it is genuinely terrifying. Sure there's plenty of humor here, as much in this specific issue as in any of the seven that have come before it, but it is of such a pitch black variety that, once you start thinking about it, peeling back the surface layer, you realize just how twisted this story is getting. And really, we are all the better for it. No point in making a Fight Club sequel if you're not going to challenge your readers, get them outside their comfort zone - and as far as comic books go, this one is about as far outside what most would consider to be the comic book comfort zone as you can get.

Pahalniuk gets full marks for coming up with the concepts and the story here, but Cameron Stewart is not to be overlooked. His artwork has been great right from the very first page of the very first issue but this eight installment ramps things up a notch or two in terms of unorthodox panel layout, in terms of how the pictures flow from one page to the next (and flow they do, in more ways than one) and in terms of how he really nails the different facial expressions and eye movements of the different characters populating this story. Dave Stewart's colors are top notch and, as easy and common as it is to overlook the lettering, special mention needs to be made of what Nate Piekos of Blambot is doing in that department with this book. Little things like that, the way that the lettering becomes part of Stewart's illustrations for example, really go the extra mile and make this the great read that it is. David Mack once again contributes a fantastic cover (and then some) as he has since the series launched. Oh, and as always, read the letters pages in the back of the book. You won't regret it.