Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club Sequel Coming As A Comic

Eighteen years after Fight Club first saw print, author Chuck Palahniuk is returning to the world of Project Mayhem for a sequel -- which will take the form of a ten issue comic book series illustrated by Cameron Stewart and published by Dark Horse

Speaking to USA Today, Palahniuk says the comic will pick up ten years after the events of the novel (which ends a little differently to the 1999 movie adaptation), with the unnamed Narrator struggling to be a good father to his nine-year-old son Junior, and trying not to repeat the mistakes his own father made with him.

Direct sequels that cross to different media aren't wholly unusual for comics -- it's a standard format for continuing the stories from some movies, at the very least -- but this comic is explicitly a sequel to the novel and not the film, which makes it rather unusual. Palahniuk first announced his intentions to write a Fight Club sequel in comic form at last year's San Diego Comic-Con. Writer Matt Fraction was at one point rumored to be involved with the project, and may at least have provided Palahniuk with some advice on his scripts.

Palahniuk promises that Fight Club 2 will bring back the cult-like saboteurs of Project Mayhem, and will feature at least one visit to a fight club. The reappearance of the narrator's hallucinatory pal Tyler Durden also seems certain, though there may be more to him than previously imagined. "Tyler is something that maybe has been around for centuries, and is not just this aberration that's popped into [the Narrator's] mind," said Palahniuk.

Fight Club 2 marks artist Cameron Stewart's second big announcement in the weeks leading up to San Diego Comic-Con. He was previously announced as co-writer and layout artist on the new-look Batgirl -- and his redesign of the character with fellow artist Babs Tarr sparked a flurry of fan art and reader enthusiasm. Stewart revealed via Twitter that he was approached for the Batgirl gig the day after the Fight Club book was given the green light.

Fight Club will be the subject of a panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday at 7pm in room 25ABC, teasingly titled, "Fight Club: From Page To Screen And Beyond." Palahniuk and Fight Club movie director David Fincher will both be in attendance.

The first issue of Fight Club 2 is scheduled to go on sale April 8 2015 from Dark Horse.