Fight Club Sequel: The First Details on the Graphic Novel

In spite of an initial announcement that sounded as though it was more a sequel to the feature film than the novel that inspired it, author Chuck Palahniuk told Hustler in a recent interview that the upcoming graphic novel sequel to Fight Club will avoid at least one specific thing that 20th Century Fox and filmmaker David Fincher brought to the work: he won't refer to the nameless narrator as Jack. Instead, Palahniuk said, his sequel opts for another name the narrator used in both the original novel and the film adaptation when he was trolling support groups looking for a human connection. He'll be Cornelius--and his marriage to Marla Singer isn't all it was cracked up to be. "The sequel will be told from the — at first — submerged perspective of Tyler Durden as he observes the day-to-day tedium of the narrator's life," Palahniuk said (via The Cult). "Because 20th Century Fox created the convention of calling the protagonist Jack, I'm calling him Cornelius. He's living a compromised life with a failing marriage, unsure about his passion for his wife. The typical midlife bullshit. Likewise, Marla is unsatisfied and dreams of accessing the wild man she'd once fallen in love with. She tampers with the small pharmacy of drugs that her husband needs to suppress Tyler, and — go figure — Tyler reemerges to terrorize their lives." It's the process, not the plot, that concerns Palahniuk--and the transition from novel to comics. "The sequel has been percolating in my mind for years," the author admitted. "My only worry is about presenting it in the form of a graphic novel. The medium shapes the messages, and I'll be relearning how to tell stories. My tendency is to hold the entire plot in my mind until I'm afraid of forgetting it. Once I start writing, I can't stop. That feverish, ill-fed, exhausting stint of writing in the only part of the process that I fear."