''Apartment 3-G'' is an American newspaper

soap opera A soap opera (also called a daytime drama or soap) is a genre of a long-running radio or television Serial (radio and television), serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term ''soap opera'' originat ...

comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...

about a trio of career women who share an apartment in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

. Created by Nicholas P. Dallis with art by Alex Kotzky, the strip began May 8, 1961, initially distributed by the

Publishers Syndicate Publishers Newspaper Syndicate (later Publishers Syndicate) was a syndication service based in Chicago that operated from 1925 to 1967, when it merged with the Hall Syndicate. Publishers syndicated such long-lived comic strips as '' Big Chief Wa ...

, which later merged with

King Features Syndicate King Features Syndicate, Inc. is an American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product License, licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, columnist, newspape ...

in 1988. The strip went through several changes of writers and artists over its 54-year run, finally ending on November 22, 2015.

Characters and story

The strip's situations and characters were influenced by the soap opera strip ''

Mary Worth ''Mary Worth'' is an American newspaper comic strip that has had an eight-decade run from 1938. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, this soap opera-style strip influenced several that followed. It was created by writer Allen Saunders and ar ...

'' as well as

Rona Jaffe Rona Jaffe (June 12, 1931 – December 30, 2005) was an American novelist who published numerous works from 1958 to 2003. During the 1960s, she also wrote cultural pieces for ''Cosmopolitan''. Early life and education Jaffe was born into a Jewi ...

's bestselling 1958 novel '' The Best of Everything''.''Mary Worth''
at Don Markstein's Toonopedia

from the original on October 24, 2015. The three main characters are Margo Magee, a

brunette Brown hair, also referred to as brunette (when female), is the second-most common human hair color, after black hair. It varies from light brown to dark hair. It is characterized by higher levels of the dark pigment eumelanin and lower level ...

who has variously held positions as a secretary, actors' agent,

publicist A publicist is a person whose job is to generate and manage publicity for a company, a brand, or public figure – especially a celebrity – or for work or a project such as a book, film, or album. Publicists are public relations specialists wh ...

and

event planner Event management is the application of project management to the creation and development of small and/or large-scale personal or corporate events such as festivals, conferences, ceremonies, weddings, formal parties, concerts, or convention (me ...

; Abigail "Tommie" Thompson, a

redheaded Red hair, also known as ginger hair, is a human hair color found in 2–6% of people of Northern or Northwestern European ancestry and lesser frequency in other populations. It is most common in individuals homozygous for a recessive allel ...

nurse Nursing is a health care profession that "integrates the art and science of caring and focuses on the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and human functioning; prevention of illness and injury; facilitation of healing; and alle ...

; and Lu Ann Powers née Wright, a

blonde Blond () or blonde (), also referred to as fair hair, is a human hair color characterized by low levels of eumelanin, the dark pigment. The resultant visible hue depends on various factors, but always has some yellowish color. The color can be ...

art teacher Visual arts education is the area of learning that is based upon the kind of art that one can see, visual arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, and design in jewelry, pottery, weaving, fabrics, etc. and design applied to more practic ...

. The appearances of the three main characters were loosely based on real actresses: Tommie was based on

Lucille Ball Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) was an American actress, comedian, producer, and studio executive. She was recognized by ''Time (magazine), Time'' in 2020 as one of the most influential women of the 20th century for h ...

, Margo on

Joan Collins Dame Joan Henrietta Collins (born 23 May 1933) is an English actress, author and columnist. She is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe Awards, a People's Choice Award, two Soap Opera Digest Awards and a Primetime Emm ...

and Lu Ann on

Tuesday Weld Tuesday Weld (born Susan Ker Weld; August 27, 1943) is a retired American actress. She began acting as a child and progressed to mature roles in the late 1950s. She won a Golden Globe Award, Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Female Newcome ...

. Kindly neighbor

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

Aristotle Papagoras serves as a father figure. Lu Ann, originally single, met and married a

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its origins to 1 ...

pilot An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its Aircraft flight control system, directional flight controls. Some other aircrew, aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are al ...

named Garth Powers (renamed Gary in a 2011 story arc) in 1964, after which she moved out of the apartment. She was replaced by another blonde, Beth Howard. Lu Ann's husband was later killed in

Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

and she eventually moved back into the apartment, while Beth was written out after falling in love with young physician Lester Pride. There have been a number of other notable supporting characters in the comic strip throughout the years. Byron Frost was Margo's generally supportive boss from 1962 to 1990. Newton Figg (1966, 1971, 1977, 1980, 1986), the handsome but childlike author of children's books, talked to his pet stuffed animals as though they were real. Not surprisingly, he had some romantic challenges. Roberta Magee, Margo's temperamental mother, caused recurring troubles. When Lisa Trusiani took over scripting the strip, stories began to revolve more around family relations. Gabriella Gatica turns up in 1999 as Margo's biological mother, a maid that Margo's father had had an affair with. Blaze Wright, Lu Ann's employment-challenged cousin and an aspiring actor, first appeared in 1998 and appeared off and on through 2011. Ruby Wright followed in 2007 and turned out to be Lu Ann's biological mother. Eric Mills, owner of the Mills Gallery, nurtures Lu Ann's interest in painting; he also became a reoccurring romantic interest for Margo in 2006-2008 (when he is presumed dead in an avalanche) and in 2014-15 (when he turns up alive after all).

Creative team

* Nicholas Dallis (story) & Alex Kotzky (art): May 8, 1961 - 1991 * Alex Kotzky (story and art): 1991 - Jan 12, 1997 * Lisa Trusiani (story) & Brian Kotzky (art): Jan 13, 1997 - Nov 29, 1999 * Lisa Trusiani (story) & Frank Bolle (art): Dec 1, 1999 - 2006 * Margaret Shulock (story) & Frank Bolle (art): 2007 - Nov 22, 2015 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 1999, Note: Information "by Frank Bolle via Jim Amash March 2006".

Frank Bolle Frank W. Bolle (June 23, 1924 – May 12, 2020) was an American comic-strip artist, comic book artist and illustrator, best known as the longtime artist of the newspaper strips ''Winnie Winkle'' and ''The Heart of Juliet Jones''; for stints on th ...

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 ''Judge Parker'' is an American soap opera-style comic strip created by Nicholas P. Dallis that first appeared on November 24, 1952. The strip's look and content were influenced by the work of Allen Saunders and Ken Ernst on ''Mary Worth''. C ...

''.

Awards

Alex Kotzky received the 1968

National Cartoonists Society The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the ...

's Story Comic Strip Award for his work on ''Apartment 3-G''.

References

External links

King Features Syndicate: ''Apartment 3-G''
official site) from the original on December 10, 2015.

at

Don Markstein's Toonopedia Don Markstein's Toonopedia (subtitled A Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge) is an online encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation, initiated February 13, 2001. Donald D. Markstein, the sole writer and editor of Toonopedi ...

Archived
from the original on April 4, 2012.
Comics Curmudgeon: ''Apartment 3-G''National Cartoonists Society Awards
* {{King Features Syndicate Comics American comic strips Drama comics 1961 comics debuts 2015 comics endings Fictional locations in comics

Characters and story

Creative team

Awards

See also

References

External links