ArtBy Pierre Johnson May 12, 2021

The Adventures of Nico Teen

Illustrated text, "The Adventures of Nico Teen," made our of cigarette butts. An anthropomorphized cigarette with blond hair and a large hat stands next to it.

When I first laid eyes on this dame, she was smokin’! There she was: looking alluring in a smoke-filled room. She was from a Kool town called Newport, Salem…a dive of coffin-nails; Yet who would’ve deemed that this gold-diggin’ trickster could be so deadly?

I guess I just had to learn the hard way. That greedy girl didn’t love me. She just wanted my money. Even if it meant killing me to get it.

A two-panel comic scene in which the anthropormorphized cigarette Nico Teen says "Psst, hey" and a man wearing a dunce cap and a shirt with a "D" for dunce on it responsds "Who, me?" "Yeah, you. Here," says Nico Teen.

A two-panel scene in which the man in the dunce cap looks at the reader and thinks "Oh boy." He then says to Nico Teen "What's up?" with his hat popping off of his head and his eyes and tongue jutting out at her.

A single-panel scene in which Nico Teen says "How about a kiss, stupid?" and the man in the dunce cap replies "Duh... OK." He is pictured swooning with his eyes half closed, hearts circling his head, and drool dripping out of his mouth around his slack tongue.

A single-panel scene showing the man in the dunce cap taking a long drag of the cigarette, Nico Teen, who is saying "Ooh yeaah! that's it big daddy! Ooh yeah! Puff! Puff! Puff!" The caption reads "Fire on one end, fool on the other."

A single panel scene in which the cigarette, Nico Teen, is flying through the air saying "Ha ha ha ha, IDIOT" as the man in the dunce cap coughs furiously and says "Oh hell no!"

A single-panel scene showing the man in the dunce cap clutching at his throat and saying "Oh no! My heart! My lung! I-I-I I can't breath!"

A two panel scene showing the cigarette, Nico Teen, say "Drop dead." In the next panel, as she lies on the ground in the foreground, an x-ray view of the man's lungs shows a dark mass in the right lung and the word "STOP" bold and in all caps.

A large single-panel scene shows a funeral for the man in the dunce cap, open casket. Nondescript backs of heads of the crowd are in the foreground. Behind the casket stand a number of men in 1920s gangster attire: striped suits, banded fedoras, a mix of bow and straight ties, and one character wearing a monocle. "He was a good man," says one. "He was a damn fool" says another. Nico Teen, the cigarette with blond hair and a wide-brimmed hat, is in the foreground wearing a veil. "Sucker!" she say. "The End" is spelled out in text crafted from cigarettes, like the title font.

 

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