The unnamed narrator of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is back, dragging a dependence on prescription drugs, a bored wife and a destructive son along with him. Playboy has unveiled a six-page preview of Fight Club 2, Palahniuk’s comic-book sequel to his bestselling novel. It shows the character 10 years on, knocking back prescription drugs – “his shields against the slings and arrows of everyday life” – and disavowing everything about his former existence.

“Look at him. He calls himself Sebastian these days. Ten years ago, he was destined to be another Alexander the Great. A new Genghis Khan,” writes Palahniuk. “He traded his army … for what?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Rize or Die’ … the cover of Palahniuk’s comic-book sequel to his 1996 novel Fight Club. Photograph: Dark Horse Comics

The excerpt also reveals that Palahniuk’s antihero is now married to Marla Singer, the character played by Helena Bonham Carter in the 1999 film based on the novel. While their son is creating homemade gunpowder in his bedroom, their marriage is unravelling.

“Today is my ninth wedding anniversary, but I could swear I’ve been married for 60 years. I’m so tired of dieting and colouring my hair,” Singer says, adding that her husband “wasn’t always so boring”.

Illustrated by Cameron Stewart, the graphic novel will be published on 27 May by Dark Horse Comics. The publisher promised that Palahniuk will also reveal what happened to his character Tyler Durden, and added: “some imaginary friends never go away … Ten years after starting Project Mayhem, [the anonymous narrator] lives a mundane life. A kid, a wife, pills to keep his destiny at bay. But it won’t last long; the wife has seen to that. The time has come … Rize or Die.”

Palahniuk had previously said the sequel would be “dark and messy”, and that “nowadays, Tyler is telling the story … ready to launch a comeback”. At the time he referred to his protagonist as “Jack”, saying: “Jack is oblivious. Marla is bored. Their marriage has run aground on the rocky coastline of middle-aged suburban boredom. It’s only when their little boy disappears, kidnapped by Tyler, that Jack is dragged back into the world of Mayhem.”