Oh, how the mighty have fallen. From Master terrorist and an inspiration to thousands, maybe even millions; to a quiet, depressing life in the 'burbs; with white picket fences, arguments with neighbors over dog poop, and enough prescriptions to balance out the most overzealous of rhinos. Fight Club 2 opens 10 years later in the life of our narrator, calling himself Sebastian these days. (I think Palahniuk just refuses to give us a real name.) His life is a far cry from the free-living, street fighting, global unrest causing days of his past. These days Sebastian is back where we saw him at the beginning of the original book, with one key difference. This time he has all the drugs he needs to keep himself deaf to the voices inside himself. Well one in particular.
Palaniuks sharp and provocative writing comes through early on and doesn't stop as he leads you through the day to day of Sebastian's foggy, miserable existence. The writing especially gets back to that old fight club feeling when describing his family; from Marla's and his child ("The unforeseen consequence of sport fucking") to Marla's melodramatic speeches to a room of people who have it far worse from her.( "Now it's all about the pills. I swear, I can hear his stomach rattling with them.")
Early on in the issue we get a good handle on what Marla does and doesn't understand aboiut the events of the original story. She knows the difference between Sebastian and Tyler, but has no idea what Tyler Durden ended up becoming. ("Everything that was going wrong in the world, he insisted it was all his doing.") Before long, it becomes clear that this family cannot stand the test of time.
While I don't wanna ruin the big reveal in issue #1; I will let you know that it is the result of Marla deciding Sebastian could really use a few pills being replaced with placebos. She might as well have opened Charles Manson's cell. Over the course of the issue, the stakes go from bascially nil to life altering; all in the course of 30 pages.
If I'm being honest, the artist, Cameron Stewart, didn't ring a bell for me when i saw his name on the cover. That's a mistake I'll have to atone for, as Stewart's graphic style was exactly what the book needed. He does a great job of keeping a consistent visual style despite each page featuring very different scene. Really though, the best part of the art probably came from Palaniuk's script. See Chuck was very eager to make a point about the amount of drugs Sebastion is on every day, dulling his view and hold on the world around him. This is profoundly well illustrated whenever we're seeing Sebastian's point of view with large full color pills littered around the page, often even obscuring parts of his rambling narrative.
Chuck Palahniuk has taken a comic that's been on everyone's radar for about a year now, and in my opinion, smashes expactations. With a great open to the next chapter in Tyler Durden and Sebastian's lives, plenty of clever call backs to the original, and an intense cliffhanger, Palahniuk has me anxiously waiting for issue two.
4.5/5 Bars of Soap
No comments:
Post a Comment