Midnight Train

WildStar Press
Aug 4
2 min read

Illustrated by Teo DuVall | Banner Edit* by Akira B. — Illustrated by Shurjo Mukhi | Banner Edit* by Akira B.

Self Published

The world is only as beautiful as the time you take to stop and look at it. The Midnight Train by Shurjo Mukhi is a dreamy tri-narrative of love letters to public transit. This story takes an aspect of life that is typically overlooked and mundane and brings out its sense of whimsy.

The blue tones cast through this comic create a moody, almost surreal perspective that often goes unnoticed by daily commuters. Bathed in this cool, detached light, familiar settings like subway platforms and city streets transform into quiet dreamscapes, suspended between reality and reflection. In a world that tries to dull our senses to monotonous routine, it often makes people blind to the subtle poetry the world creates; flickering fireflies, the peaceful night, or even the very moonlight illuminating you and your fellow neighbor creating a solitude among strangers. With Mukhi’s use of blues, everyday living invokes a sense of introspection and melancholy that’s easy to miss when rushing from one place to another.

The Midnight Train captures a natural realism of everyday life while romanticizing it in the subtlest, most delicate ways of sharing community flyers, looking at the world below as the sails past, seeing the tired faces of strangers just like yours. Each moment is a reminder that the city is always alive and breathing, thriving with countless untold stories that may never be known. These three stories wrapped in one remind you to pause, even for a moment, to appreciate the messy, fleeting, but deeply human world that continues to move around you.

There’s an unspoken sense of togetherness and community woven through these stories that’s also very nice. It becomes a quiet solidarity, even existing in the silence of sharing public transit. At the end of the day, every stranger is trying to get home, trying to rest, heading to their next destination, or all looking up at the moon together. The Midnight Train imagines a world where public transit is living, breathing, and held with as much care as the people who ride it. Not only is it a whimsically written tale, but it is a reminder of the very real vision of collective safety where people take care of one another because of love and community, not just out of necessity.