by Vince Brusio This is a completely different kind of bloodsport. It’s Fight Club 3 #1 ( NOV180205 ) from Chuck Palahniuk, and it doesn’t bloody your knuckles. It pulverizes your cerebellum. There’s no room for crowds. No need for ring girls. This is a fight to see who’s left standing, and who gets a padded cell for Christmas. Can you keep up with the mind game obstacle course that is Tyler Durden? Can Chuck? Regardless, Eisner Award-winning artist Cameron Stewart , letterer Nate Piekos of Blambot, colorist Dave McCaig and acclaimed cover artist David Mack will collaborate with him on the follow-up to the New York Times bestselling graphic novel Fight Club 2 . In this PREVIEWSworld Exclusive interview, we pick Chuck's brain to see if he can cool down long enough to explain this latest knock-out from Dark Horse that’s coming to comic shops January 30th! ********** Vince Brusio : Let’s spitball on the tag line that helps advertise this series. If you had to answer the question yourself, Chuck, what’s the first rule of fatherhood, and how does it relate to Fight Club 3 ? Chuck Palahniuk : The first rule of fatherhood? Don't kill your kid. The second rule is: Don't die. Everything after that is gravy. Vince Brusio : Three variant covers are shown on the page opposite of the book’s solicitation. Did you have any input on those illustrations so that somehow they foreshadow events in the story? Chuck Palahniuk : You've pointed out one of the challenges unique to comics. When you write a novel your publisher might politely ask for your input on the cover, but not usually. Instead the publisher hires a smart designer, and you the writer get what you get. While in comics, my experience is that the creator has to brainstorm most or all of the images for covers. My editor, Scott Allie, and I create a long list of ideas that illustrate a theme, in the case of FC3: Portals. In effect, key holes, doorways, windows, things through which you look or pass. Thank goodness for David Mack, who can take any lame idea and make it brilliant. Vince Brusio : What might you be able to tell us about new characters that you introduce in Fight Club #3 ? Chuck Palahniuk : The best writing is not so much about creating new characters as it's about taking ancient ones known to people throughout time and making them seem fresh and unique to this new era. Vince Brusio : Fight Club 3 is a sequel to a sequel. Yet it’s listed in PREVIEWS as an ongoing series. Can you shine some light on the scope of this project? Chuck Palahniuk : In Fight Club 2 we find that Tyler's been stalking the narrator throughout history, meeting and destroying each of the narrator's ancestors. And that Tyler brought the narrator together with Marla for the purpose of breeding a son, but in turn creates a child of his own with Marla. In the new book we'll discover that Marla was also groomed from the beginning of her life to fulfill some ancient role. What Tyler's age-old plan amounts to, that's the eventual reveal. But it's big, like big-big. Vince Brusio : What makes you come back to writing Fight Club ? Is it becoming addictive? Chuck Palahniuk : Writing the FC series is addictive on every level. It allows me to work with the most-creative, most-accomplished people in their fields. It poses huge problems — first to create big problems, then to resolve them. And it provides a freedom that writing novels lacks at this moment in history. Comics aren't freighted with the expectation that they'll solve all society's problems in two hundred pages. Comics might still do that, but by entertaining readers instead of "fixing" them. My readers are not broken. Click to View Duncan Fegredo Variant ( NOV180208 ) Kirbi Fagan Variant ( NOV180206 ) David Mack Variant ( NOV180207 )