A lot of Dark Horse Comics were announced yesterday with opening day at Emerald City Comic Con, but probably none more anticipated than the one we already knew about, Fight Club 2. Saturday morning, Emerald City opened with an hour long discussion dedicated to the upcoming comic form sequel. On the panel: Artist Cameron Stewart, cover artist David Mack, Scott Allie, and of course the creator Chuck Palahniuk.
An insanely packed room at the Washington State Convention Center was treated to a preview of the upcoming book right when you walked in the door. As we knew the story picks up years after the events of Fight Club and it looks as though his son has a little bit of Tyler in him. This is also looking like some of Cameron Stewart’s best work, ever.
Dark Horse’s Aub Driver moderates the festivities. Chuck opens up talking about the FCBD issue. “It’ll be the end of the book in graphic novel form.” Allie asked Chuck about the reasoning for doing it as a graphic novel. David Mack and Chuck have been friends since 2006, after he wrote a letter to which he responded with a box of goodies and a letter. They’d been talking about ideas like life, love, and other stuff in the universe. Bendis also had a little bit to do with the genesis. From a dinner party Bendis and Mack hammered the idea of how different publishing comics is.
If Palahniuk was going to talk about Fight Club for the rest of his life then why not do it in a “Lovecraft” fashion and expand the story in two directions. Cameron Stewart came on board after 2013 when he contacted EIC Scott Allie about the book. He adapted one of the later chapters of the novel into a three page comic as proof of concept.
Chuck talked about making Stewart research what he wanted him to draw. In Stewart’s words, it was “deeply upsetting”, though he talked about how that was a good thing with this project. Scott talked about how surrealism was a big part of Chuck’s work and this was the perfect team to do it. A comparison to the last issue of Stewart’s Batgirl, a comparison was even drawn because of Barbra fighting her own mind.
A walk through of the preview interiors was done by the panel. Chuck talked about naming the character Sebastian, because he used every other name he knew in his other fiction work.
We’ll never see GUTS because you can’t literally depict someone being disemboweled.” Cameron Stewart’s work is perfectly cartoony for what the writer wants to depict.
The panel opened up for questions.
ANy other callbacks beyond Marla and Sebastian?
“Yeah”
Gas station worker went back to college?
“I’ll find a place for him now.”
Sebastian’s real name?
“Dealt with in FCBD issue”
Other books in comic medium?
“Invisible monsters by David Mack, Rand done after the Franco movie comes out.”
One of the new stories in Chuck’s upcoming collection will be a girl version of Guts called Cannibal.
what do you prefer, comics or novel?
“Writing a graphic novel is live having a terrific workshop.” Though he’s full of ideas, he doesn’t necessarily know where they’re going to end up.
With that the panel came to an end, we’ll be at the Marvel: Black Vortex to Secret Wars later.
