Fuktup Funnies is a 1972 one-shot that appears to have come and gone without leading to any semblance of a cartooning career for anyone involved. These types of comics are fairly common in the underground world (Comic Book, Dirt Ball Funnies, Hit the Road, Noof Unnies, among many), though Fuktup Funnies is among the handful of those that were actually pretty good comic books.

The comic book was published by Head Imports and everything in it is, according to the indicia, copyrighted by Marty Nelson, who apparently did nothing else in comic books after this single appearance. Nelson wrote and illustrated several funny stories featuring ducks (interacting with other anthropomorphic animals and humans), but there are two stories in the middle of the book that are clearly not by Nelson. They are "Ozzie and Lotta" stories and the credit for those goes to Joe Arthur Potts (per Kennedy and the signatures at the end of the stories).

But wait a minute! Ozzie and Lotta are actually comic characters that Robert Armstrong created a year earlier in 1971. They first appeared (along with Mickey Rat's comic debut) in L.A. Comics #1 (when Ozzie's name was spelled Ozzy). Ozzie and Lotta were also featured by Armstrong in different stories that appeared in Mickey Rat #1 in 1972 and Comix Book #3 in 1975.

So then who is this Joe Arthur Potts fella and why does he appropriate Armstrong's Ozzie and Lotta characters for two stories in Fuktup Funnies? It doesn't appear possible that Potts is a pseudonym for Armstrong, as the drawing styles of Potts and Armstrong are rather distinct, especially the style of early Armstrong (circa '71 and '72). If anything, Marty Nelson is the one who draws his duck stories in the style of early Armstrong. Yet it seems suspicious that there is a rat character who appears in the last panel of the first Ozzie and Lotta story on page 24 of Fuktup Funnies...and the rat is a dead ringer for Mickey Rat. Is this just an homage to Armstrong from Joe Arthur Potts, or is something else going on here? Besides their relation to Fuktup Funnies, I can't find anything on Marty Nelson or Joe Arthur Potts on the internet.

Regarding the quality of the comic itself, Fuktup Funnies is a pretty good one, as far as one-shots by people with fleeting comic careers go. The first story is Marty Nelson's "That Darn Olde Duck in Finda Livin'" and features an old drunk duck lusting after a Jane Fonda (hot, hippy Fonda from '72) duck, which is pretty damn funny. And the two Ozzie and Lotta stories by Potts are good for a laugh as well.

The final story here, by Nelson, is about an airplane being hijacked by a radical duck just before it lands in Miami. Back in the early '70s, it seemed like there was a plane hijacking just about every month, so this was an easy plot device for comics (even Mad leveraged the concept, and Meef Comix #2 also features a hijacking story). The duck lets all the passengers go upon landing in Miami, but he demands a half-million in cash and forces the crew to fly to New York, where the duck dumps the half-million out of the plane over his old neighborhood. The duck then forces the plane to turn around and head to Cuba, but instead the plane crashes into the ocean. The crew apparently dies, but the duck and his fuck-buddy stewardesses survive. Remember the pre-9/11 days when something like that might be funny? Well, in this comic it still is.



HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES:
It is currently unknown how many copies of this comic book were printed. It has not been reprinted.

COMIC CREATORS:
Marty Nelson - 1-21, 28-36
Joe Arthur Potts - 22-27