Barfly #1: I Wish I Was Special

Barfly is about a mostly unspeaking, alcohol-consuming anthropomorphized housefly named Barfly (or Sh!teater) who used to work for the Entomologist, a “proper villain.” Now, he flips burgers, hangs out with a cat-obsessed lady, and participates in petty crime. Sometimes, I like to listen to carefully curated music while I read comics. For Barfly, I recommend Radiohead’s “Creep.” The G–B–C–Cm chord progression beautifully supports the dingy, morose narrative of Sh!teater’s existence, and the three guitar blasts that precede the chorus match Barfly’s occasional bouts of violence. Most importantly, though, Thom Yorke’s melancholic lyrics perfectly encompass Barfly’s yearning for more: “But I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here?” Barfly wants to be more. He wants to do “something great.”

That said, the gloomy longing of Barfly is more comedic than disheartening. The comic is peppered with hilarious details, like a billboard for an “off-track betting” business called Tony Enchilada’s that features an angry man screaming “We don’t sell enchiladas! Stop Asking!” The artwork is a mix of Darick Robertson (The Boys and Transmetropolitan) and Stuart Immonen (Ultimate X-Men and Empress): it’s gritty and unnerving—but with a healthy dash of classic superheroism. Playful colors fill every panel, and the tone is often flippant.

What makes Barfly stand out from similar stories, though, is its willingness to be sincere at times. In this issue, Barfly has several “conversations” with friends, and each is permeated by rhetoric about wanting to positively “change the world.” For example, Barfly’s coworker at the burger joint shares his ambition to “get a band together and go on tour.” The aspiring guitarist admires how “fearless” true rockstars appear. Immediately after that, another coworker shares her dream of becoming a famous singer and moving away.

In this way, Barfly is like many of us: he’s stuck in a life of quiet desperation, hoping for more but unable to shake old habits and perceptions. Life, it seems, does not want Barfly to be more than he is, but Barfly (yes, even Sh!teater) is going to try anyway. There’s a quote from Ethan Hawke’s The Hottest State that encapsulates this struggle: “when you’re a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you’re older, somehow they act offended if you even try.” For this reason, I am fascinated by Barfly well-crafted, funny, and sincere story. If Sh!teater can pull himself out of obscurity, maybe the rest of us can too.