Soap opera style strips have never garnered much attention or critical respect, but they do inspire a deep loyalty among their fans, which may account for their stunning longevity in print. Today new strips featuring Apartment 3–G, Mary Worth, Judge Parker and Rex Morgan M.D., each one of them well over fifty years old, are still available in newspapers and also on-line.

One of those strips has a strong connection to the Golden Age of comic books. The original artist on Apartment 3–G was Alex Kotzky who had begun his career doing pencil work for DC in the forties. He had done pencils for Sandman, Johnny Quick and even Detective Chimp.

He also did backgrounds for Will Eisner on the Sunday The Spirit. After time in the service he returned to do some wonderful (and woefully underappreciated) covers and interior work for Quality Comics on such classic characters as Plastic Man, Uncle Sam, Doll Man and Blackhawk. As the work in comics began to dwindle he moved into ghosting such strips as The Heart of Juliet Jones and Steve Canyon.

So when the head of the Syndicate that was getting Apartment 3–G ready to go called, Kotzky was more than ready. He had spent his lifetime building up to this job and when approached by the syndicate, came through with flying colors. At the end of his career he had spent over thirty years on Apartment 3–G.

The strip is a perfect study in not just the soap opera genre, but how a strip was created during the heyday of the Syndicates. Let’s start by looking at the strip itself.

Living in New York City has always been tough. Especially for three young girls doing their best to get by. For over fifty years now Apartment 3–G has been telling of the trials, tribulations and tenacity of three such women. The strip has proven to be amazingly resilient and today still appears in print as well as on-line across the country. 

Along with Mary Worth, the perennial classic of the soap-opera genre in comic strips, it is the last echo of a time when such strips had an easy home in the pages of American newspapers.

The idea for Apartment 3–G came from Nicholas P. Dallis, a psychiatrist who had already created two other successful newspaper strips. He had begun his career change with the introduction of Rex Morgan, M.D. in 1948.

His original intentions for Rex were apparently a bit altruistic. Dallis saw comic strips as a great way to slyly let the public know a few things about modern medicine while entertaining them at the same time.

However noble his idea was, the man acquired a jones for writing soap operas. And the truth be told, he was good at it. His second strip, Judge Parker, opened in newspapers on November 24, 1952. This time out Dallis used a pen name, Paul Nichols.

With a strip so clearly divorced from what he understood, the medical profession, Dallis began Judge Parker as a character who went after criminals. It was in the sixties that he actually moved to the bench. At that point the strip began to focus more on a lawyer named Sam Driver who proved to be so popular that the Judge began to disappear from his own strip.

Considering how hard it is to create and sell a successful comic strip, much less two of them, what Nick Dallis did next was amazing. Even taking into account his well-established connections inside King Features Syndicate, the introduction of a third strip that proved to be a hit is an amazing creative feat.

And all three of his original strips are still running today!

On May 8, 1961, Apartment 3–G began appearing in newspapers. While Rex Morgan M.D. and Judge Parker had clearly flirted with the boundaries of soap opera, what took place in Apartment 3–G happily took place well within those familiar boundaries.

Ironically, in its portrayal of working, middle-class women trying to make it on their own, it was actually more realistic than many other strips inside the genre. What Dallis wrote rang true for many, many readers.

He brought an intelligence to his work that other soap opera styled strips seemed to miss out on. Also, Dallis had become an expert at creating fully believable characters. The three ladies he brought into Apartment 3-G went past the usual clichés.

They each had real adventures and reacted to what happened to them as strongly as anyone might in real life. They were in short, completely human. The way they dealt with their struggles and problems made it all the easier for readers to identify with all three.

The adventures centered on three young women trying to get by in New York City. Their individuality was clear from the start. In the opening storyline there was a redhead named Tommy Thompson who worked in the medical profession. Schoolteacher LuAnn Powers was a blonde, and the brunette, Margo Magee, started her career as an actor’s agent.

During the preliminary work in developing the strip Kotzky was so skilled an artist that the minute the strip debuted the characters were immediately identifiable through his strong images and defined line. The idea of their hair color as a differentiating factor in who they were was negligible at best.

All three appeared from the first strip with their own clear and distinct personalities. Margo has a bit of a temper, but somehow manages to hold the other two together when it all hits the fan. LuAnn was filled with energy and over time lost a husband in Vietnam. Which opened the door to establishing a stronger identity through her charitable actions.

The third roommate, Tommy, always managed to bounce back from everything, her resilience often emerging to be the real strength of the three. Like the best of a group dynamic in almost any fictional setting, each woman seemed to balance each other out.

Supporting the three, in a quasi-father/wise uncle role, is their neighbor Professor Aristotle Papagoras. As the years have passed he has dispensed advice to the ladies, trying to not step on too many toes as he does and occasionally helped them behind the scenes.

As he had with his first two success stories in the world of newspaper comic strips, Dallis knew that finding the right artist for Apartment 3-G was important to what he was doing. This time out, his work proved to be a bit easier as he had the weight of the syndicate as well as over a decade of experience behind him.

Although it debuted in 1961, Dallis actually began creating the strip in 1952. Over the years, while he developed the final version, he found inspiration in a variety of sources. Stars from the silver screen and soap opera best sellers helped contribute to what he saw could be accomplished in the strip. Still, it took until the late fifties for the strip to move into actual production.

The key element in getting the strip off the ground was Harold Anderson, who was the head of Publisher’s Newspaper Syndicate (sometimes called “Hall Syndicate”, which eventually become part of the modern version of King Features of Syndicate). Like any good head of a successful syndicate, Anderson had his ear to the ground.

Eventually he got wind that Dallis, a man who had already created two substantial hits, had a third one ready to go. Anderson knew plenty of people in the industry including the world of newspaper comics, comic books and magazine illustration.

He knew what was good and had an instinct for who might be able to work together. While he had a long history of quality work in comics and illustration, what made him so perfect for the job was his work as a ghost on the romantic strip The Heart of Juliet Jones.

With that work he had clearly established himself as being able to handle not only a daily strip with dependability, but his artistic portrayal of women was done with a deft touch and a sense of strong realism.

When Anderson recommended Kotzky to Dallis, all three men hit the jackpot. Bound by years of experience in their respective fields, the writer and the artist found common ground. The syndicate was so sure of the strip’s success that they debuted it as both a daily and as a Sunday color page.

Given that what Dallis was writing was meant to reflect the real world, Kotzky easily matched that tone in his artwork. His lines were crisp, tight and when he drew a character smiling, you could feel her joy coming off the page. Even if it was supposed to be a private moment for her. It always seemed that, through his skill as an artist, the reader instead shared what was happening on the page. It never felt voyeuristic.

Kotzky’s years in comic books and as a ghost had taught him the importance of mixing perspective. He had become an expert at moving his readers around the strip.  He could start with an exterior, move to a close up and then drop back for a group shot without the reader even being aware of what he was doing. Kotzky made it look so natural.

It should be mentioned that his tone for the strip was also one shared by other soap operas of the day. But this isn’t a reflection on Kotzky’s originality. He did work for a syndicate and they had rules and goals. It does show the man’s adaptability to any situation. Something he had undoubtedly picked up penciling Johnny Quick in the evolving house style of DC almost twenty years earlier.

The man was a pro. In 1968 he was given The National Cartoonists Society’s Comic Strip Award for his work on Apartment 3–G. When Dallis passed away in 1991 he even took over writing duties. The artist died in 1996. His immediate successor was his son Brian.

The art was then taken over by Frank Bolle. In a wonderful coincidence Bolle had cut his teeth on The Heart of Juliet Jones, just like Kotzky had decades earlier.

Today the strip is still in print and on-line.  Still drawn by Bolle, it is now written by Margaret Shulock who fills the world of Apartment 3-G with as much life as it had all those years ago.

The women are almost as young as the first day that they appeared. They are still working hard at trying to deal with careers, men, modern life in the city, being friends and possibly even occasionally waiting on hold for their local cable provider to pick up.

Apartment 3-G is still a classic. Thanks to Dallis’ strong writing and Kotzky’s near-perfect style, it may be the only soap opera newspaper strip to rival the eternal Mary Worth for the best ever in its genre. 

One quick note, the presence of “3-G” in the title has been interpreted by many to be a sly reference to “3 Girls.”

— Mark Squirek