Editorial cartoon in ink and watercolor on a rainy airport apron in Portland, Oregon, under a gray sky with snow-capped Mount Hood behind the terminal. Sen. Susan Collins stands in an airplane doorway in a blue suit, both arms up making peace signs like Richard Nixon, and a speech balloon says: Hello Portland, Maine! Below her, a crowd of puzzled Portlanders goes about its day: a man in flannel eating pizza, a hiker with a map, a person smoking a joint, a cargo-bike rider, a man in a Trail Blazers hoodie bouncing on a pogo stick, a blue-haired woman with a pint of beer, a man with a waxed mustache playing a ukulele with a dog in a rain jacket, a person in a frog costume, a Timbers fan, Darth Vader playing flaming bagpipes on a unicycle, and two people having coffee while a waitress stands over their table holding a plate with a whole roast chicken. A neon sign reads Sassy's Live Nudes and a banner reads Keep Portland Weird. Satire; the quoted line is invented. Drawn to the desk editor’s direction · render source not recorded
How this one came together
23 drafts, in order, before this one ran. Click one to zoom.
A note on method: this one is not the machine. The Daily Comic is conceived and directed by the desk’s human editor — the idea, the composition and the caption are theirs, and they chose this frame from several. The drawing itself was rendered with AI image tools to that direction. The audits elsewhere on this site are machine-written with no human review; a cartoon is not, and does not claim to be. If something here is wrong, say so — corrections are logged in the open.
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