Apartment 3-G

Alex Kotsky's Apartment 3-G

Apartment 3-G is an American newspaper comic strip about a trio of career women who share Apartment 3-G in Manhattan. Created by Nicholas P. Dallis with art by Alex Kotzky, the strip began May 8, 1961, initially distributed by the short-lived Publishers Syndicate, which soon merged with King Features Syndicate.

Characters and story

The strip's situations and characters were influenced by the pioneering soap opera strip Mary Worth and Rona Jaffe's bestselling 1958 novel The Best of Everything.^[1] The three main characters are Margo Magee, a brunette secretary, actors' agent, publicist and event planner; Abigail "Tommie" Thompson, a redheaded nurse; and Lu Ann Powers née Wright, a blonde art teacher and widow of a U.S. Air Force pilot. Kindly neighbor Professor Aristotle Papagoras serves as a father figure. Lu Ann, originally single, met her husband and married in the 1960s, after which she moved out of the apartment to be replaced by another blonde, Beth. Lu Ann's husband was killed in Vietnam, and she eventually moved back into the apartment.

The depictions of the three main characters are loosely based on real actors. Tommie is based on Lucille Ball, Margo on Joan Collins and Lu Ann on Tuesday Weld.^[2]

Creative team

Panels from Apartment 3-G (1969), with the series' lead characters (l. to r.): Abigail "Tommie" Thompson, Lu Ann Powers, and Margo Magee.

Alex Kotzky, who drew and inked in a tight and crisp realistic style, was the artist of Apartment 3-G for more than 30 years. When Dallis died in 1991, Kotzky began writing the strip. With Kotzky's death in 1996, his son, Brian Kotzky, took over as the Apartment 3-G artist, and Lisa Trusiani became the scripter. In 2000, Frank Bolle stepped in as the illustrator when Brian Kotzky left to become a teacher. Writer Margaret Shulock later succeeded Trusiani.

Dallis, formerly a psychiatrist, also created the soap opera comic strips Rex Morgan, M.D. and Judge Parker.

Awards

Alex Kotzky received the 1968 National Cartoonists Society's Story Comic Strip Award for his work on Apartment 3-G.

See also

• List of women in comics

References

1. ^ Markstein, Don. Toonopedia: Mary Worth.
2. ^ Mendez: Apartment 3-G

External links

• The Lovely Ladies of Apartment 3-G
• Comics Curmudgeon: Apartment 3-G
• King Features Syndicate: Apartment 3-G
• Apartment 3-G at Don Markstein's Toonopedia
• National Cartoonists Society Awards
• Mendez, Prof. A. E.. "The Rules of Attraction: The Look of Love: The Rise and Fall of the Photo-Realistic Newspaper Strip, 1946–1970: Remembering The Girls Next Door: Alex Kotzky and Apartment 3-G". Archived from the original on July 12, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070712035925/http://profmendez.tripod.com/html/apart3G.htm.