A busted brass gramophone turns up in a forgotten locker beneath the T&P Station, its horn dented, its crank stiff, its only record a cracked shellac stamped with an ink-smudged label: "Southbound Lullaby." When Reya Cortez—junior conductor, schedule doodler, and unofficial historian of Fort Worth's trains—drops the needle, the city answers back. Streetcar bells tangle with cicada choirs. The neon Longhorn from Exchange Avenue saunters off its sign and tips a hat. A steam whistle stitched from thunder rolls down Magnolia. And a voice Reya knows like Sunday afternoons—her abuelo's, long gone—hums along inside the grooves, promising that every stop still remembers its story if you listen between the clicks.
Not everyone is charmed. Transit inspector O. B. Pflug (clipboard tyrant, enemy of whimsy) declares the gramophone a code violation and slaps it with a noise abatement sticker the size of a billboard. When the machine won't stay quiet, Pflug mobilizes an armada of safety cones, parking boots, and a tow truck named Petunia. Reya grabs her crew—bus driver Ginny Watanabe with a thermos of chicory coffee, bike courier Mal who knows every alley cut-through, Old Man Bishop who swears he drove the last interurban, and Juno the pit bull, steadfast and unbothered—and barrels into a midnight dash along the Trinity Railway Express. They dodge yard cranes, descend into a map-lined maintenance tunnel, and surface at Tandy Hills just as a dry storm sketches trains in the sky.
With every spin, the record trades one memory for one miracle. If the final groove hits its paper label, Fort Worth's folklore will fall silent, and Reya's family stories with it. The only hope is a B-side she's not supposed to play—"Northbound Reprise"—backward, in the rain, at Fair Park's echoing bandshell, while tubas from a runaway halftime drill march themselves home. Lettered in swirls, punctuated by full-bleed nightscapes and tiny gag strips titled "Service Delays," this is a comic about timetables that slip, legends that refuse, and the small, defiant music that keeps a city arriving right on time.
Charlie Charlton (born 1987 in Arlington, Texas) is a comics artist and writer whose work braids urban folklore, transit nerdery, and slice-of-life humor into punchy panels and sprawling nightscapes. After studying sequential art at SCAD, Charlie storyboarded for indie animation shops in Austin and taught comics workshops at Dallas Makerspace, where they're known to ink with a ticket stub as often as a brush.
Their risograph zines Cyclone Alley and Median Strip built a regional following and led to newspaper-style serials for a Fort Worth weekly. In longer form, Charlie's graphic collections and fables—like Monsters in the Metroplex and Gramophone: A Fable—trace the seams where trains, ghost stories, and municipal bylaws meet. Whether drawing bus depots at dawn or mythic after-hours detours, they favor clear lines, tactile sound effects, and maps tucked into the endpapers.
Charlie lives in Fort Worth's Near Southside with a partner and a pit bull named Juno, usually catching the last train home when ideas won't quit. When not at the drafting table, they chase field recordings under bridges, ride the TRE for reference, and host community sketch nights about wayfinding, signage, and the stories that live between stations.
Oh, this is the frequency I crave.
The book insists that "every stop still remembers its story," and it refuses to treat memory as a museum piece. It vibrates. It travels.
When Reya drops the needle and the city answers, I felt the auditorium of Fair Park expand around me, the storm sketching locomotives above the bandshell, the record trading memory for miracle with each spin. Yes, yes, yes.
The theme is simple and devastating: cities are choirs, and the only way to hear your part is to "listen between the clicks." Family lore becomes transit map, and transit map becomes a promise to show up for the next stop.
By the time tubas march themselves home and a pit bull keeps the tempo, this fable has argued for care, for keeping time with the places that raised us. I closed the last page buzzing like a catenary line.
The city sings here, not as backdrop but as instrument. A neon Longhorn tipping a hat, a whistle braided from thunder, tubas marching themselves home, and maps that become tunnels you can feel underfoot: the book piles marvels without smothering the tracks that hold them. Fort Worth's neighborhoods get their textures right, from Exchange Avenue's dazzle to the quiet lift of Tandy Hills, and the result is a folklore that feels hand-stamped and local even when the sky draws trains.
Reya's curiosity is contagious, but what grounds the magic is the way her abuelo's off-page presence tunes her choices, never sappy. Pflug reads hilarious and specific, a clipboard absolutist who still obeys the rails he loves. The crew spark in tandem: Mal's kinetic asides, Ginny's thermos-warm banter, Bishop's tall tales that might be receipts, and Juno doing the essential job of being unbothered.
Lettering curls and track diagrams steer your eye smartly, and the full-bleed nightscapes feel like standing under stormlight; a few sequences linger a beat too long, especially early scenes of Pflug's clampdowns, but the rhythm recovers as the "Southbound Lullaby" spins down. The gag strips labeled "Service Delays" add punctuation and wit. A couple of page turns telegraph their reveals, yet the compositional confidence and musical motif make this a graceful ride.
A giddy chase along the Trinity Railway Express pairs a ticking-groove countdown with tender family stakes, and every panel hums like a switchyard at midnight.
