#and also that i'm a confused wombat who is very baffled

[thebibliomancer]

50 More Days of Comics! 50/50: Fight Club 2 #7 (2015)

Soooo.... the fiftieth comic in the mystery box is.... a comic book sequel to Fight Club. Specifically the book, not the movie.

Apparently original author Chuck Palahniuk was convinced to do a sequel by Chelsea Cain, Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction, and Kelly Sue DeConnick. You monsters.

Its been a while since I’ve seen the Fight Club movie (or maybe I never saw it and just absorbed enough from pop culture osmosis that I think I remember watching it?) and I’ve never read the original book

buuuuut

This is some high grade nonsense. I have no idea what’s going on in this issue.

I looked up INFORMATION ON WIKIPEDIIIIIIA and apparently the comic sequel kicks off ten years after the novel where Narrator (apparently Sebastian) and Marla are married with a son living a suburban life. Except Marla gets bored of suburban life and replaces Sebastian’s medicine with placebos to resurrect Tyler Durden so she can have an affair with her husband’s split personality.

Instead, Tyler burns down Sebastian and Marla’s home and fakes their sons death.

GOOD JOB, MARLA.

And then a bunch of other stuff happens. Like a bunch of other stuff. The wikipedia page has full on synopses for each issue, which I don’t see often for comic books.

But the point being that this comic actually has a recap page, designed by Chelsea Cain and Matt Fraction to look like an airplane ‘in case of emergency landing’ instructions. With a joke “Please limit prayer to hushed tones so as not to offend other passengers during Emergency Landing” which I don’t really know how to feel about.

1) To survive, Sebastian must pretend to be Tyler.

2.) If he can bluff his way into Tyler’s hideout after being coached by Dr. Wrong, he can rescue his son.

3.) While doing so, he gets word that his wife is dead. He is bereft.

4.) We, however, see that Marla is alive. She and an old, old friend are celebrating the discovery of their mutual past.

5.) Tyler, ever the troublemaker, insists that Dr. Wrong is the real mastermind and has plans to seize control of the world.

6.) ... thus leaving Sebastian with no one he can trust.

So the... story? starts with a truck delivering crates to a decrepit looking mansion. The people who ordered the delivery declare they’ll call the forklift and start shout chanting “HIS NAME IS ROBERT PAULSON” which prompts.... a guy sleeping underground in the garden to wake up, walk through the house, unload a crated nuclear bomb, and throw it on the person who decided to wake him up which crushes the guy to death.

Hey, I’ve heard mornings where I’ve felt like that too.

And then Robert Paulson, I guess, walks off down the road.

What an inexplicable series of events.

Sebastian in a car with Dr. Wrong holds him at gunpoint and insists that he toss his weapon out the window. So Dr. Wrong.... throws a pocket watch out??

And then starts telling a story about some book “The Sorrows of Young Werther” which apparently caused a spate of suicides that was nicknamed “Werther Fever.”

Dr. Wrong: “My point is that fictional characters can survive their readers.”

He also says that Tyler can’t harm them, unless they fall asleep.

Immediately, Young Sebastian and Young Tyler are walking in a graveyard.

Young Sebastian: “So I fell asleep in the car.”

Young Tyler: “‘Fraid so.”

Young Tyler (Fight Club Babies, making their dreams come truuuuue) exposits to Sebastian about how he exists because Tyler needs him because his parents fought all the time, even after divorce, so Tyler stepped in as a peacemaker.

Read: Burned their houses down.

Young Tyler: “Now we’ll bring peace to the entire world.”

Read: Destroy human civilization to bring about some dumb survivalist fantasy. He shows Young Sebastian an abandoned city being reclaimed by nature.

Young Tyler: “We’ll save the world... or be condemned as the most evil force since the Nazis. All those people who claim power by trumpeting their victimhood... let them be our victims.”

Sebastian’s Son appears, looking like Damien Wayne, training in martial arts, like a Damian Wayne, and gets a call from Tyler Durden who informs the suddenly excited youth that his father is coming to visit.

Son, who doesn’t get mentioned by name in this issue or on wikipedia, is also confused why his dad is pretending to be Tyler. And gets a call from his mom, Marla, who apparently tells him to denounce Sebastian.

ALSO: I glanced ahead, because I’m never, ever going to read this series in full. And hahahah god damn. This is a trip. A very short bit of spoilers under a read more because.

The comic apparently ends when fans of Fight Club who have seen the movie but not the book and identify with Tyler rewrite the plot.

Then author Palahniuk goes for a walk on the beach with Tyler Durden and laments the integrity of stories and art. AND THEN Tyler shoots Palahniuk in the head when the author describes his thoughts for Fight Club 3.

What a bafflement.