Name Alex Kotzky Role Comic Strip Creator | ||
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Died September 26, 1996, New York City, New York, United States | ||
Alex Kotzky (September 11, 1923 - September 26, 1996) was a cartoonist best known for his three decades of work on the comic strip Apartment 3-G, distributed by Publishers-Hall Syndicate.
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Born in New York City, Kotzky studied at Pratt Institute and attended the Art Students League on a 1941 scholarship. While still a student, he answered a newspaper ad for a comic book artist and worked in 1940 with Chad Grothkopf on features for National/DC Comics, including such characters as Johnny Quick, Sandman, Three Aces and Detective Chimp.
Comic books
While working on Blackhawk and Espionage, he drew backgrounds for Will Eisner's The Spirit. He worked on Plastic Man, Doll Man, Kid Eternity and Manhunter for Quality Comics from 1946 to 1951. He drew horror, Western and war comics for Ziff-Davis.
Freelancing in 1954, he did illustrations for medical magazines and the Johnstone and Cushing ad agency. He also did at least two booklets for Will Eisner's American Visuals, the General Motors Informational Rack Booklet GM-IR-56-35 The Story of the Olympics and American Trucking Association's Heroes of the Highways. With Allen Saunders, he did a Philip Morris comic strip advertisement series, Duke Handy (from March 30, 1958 to at least October 12 of the same year), while also ghosting for newspaper strips (Steve Canyon, The Heart of Juliet Jones, Big Ben Bolt).
In 1955/56 he did interior illustrations for the Ziff-Davis science fiction magazines If and Amazing Stories.
After a struggle with kidney disease, Kotzky died in 1996. The strip was continued by Kotzky's son, Brian, with writer Lisa Trusiani. Frank Bolle took over the strip in 2000 with scripting by Margaret Shulock.
Awards
Kotzky received the National Cartoonists Society Story Comic Strip Award for 1968 for his work on Apartment 3-G.