The film is about "Tom Domino", a riffing, self-styled, noir-like protagonist who runs an East Village alternative newspaper by day, but who struggles by night when he gets home and tries to create a cartoon strip. A verbal sparring match with a sexy woman in a Manhattan bar one evening enables him to snap his cartoonist's writer's block, leading him to dash home after the encounter, and set down in cartoon form everything that just happened between him and the girl (whose name is "Daphne"). The cartoon strip (later named "City News") becomes a local hit, boosting his newspaper's sales. Now, with the newspaper finally a success, Domino finds himself in a conundrum: does he love Daphne genuinely for who she is, or only because she is the muse who has enabled him to become a success?