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Apartment 3-G, 7/22/04

When I tell people that I obsessively read the comics pages, they often ask me, “What’s the deal with Apartment 3-G?” I reply, “It’s about three young women — a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette — who live together in New York.” I’m beginning to think that I might need to add “in the 1950s” to the end of that sentence, because despite occasional references to such modern concepts as “Thai food” and “dyslexia,” the strip is pretty much stuck in an Eisenhower-era sensibility. To be blunt: where’s the sex, dammit? Surely any group of hip, attractive, twentysomething single ladies in the big city would be doing a bit more bed-hopping than this crew, especially since they don’t seem to be tied down by harrowing jobs or anything. (You can get your name featured in a future installment of “I Read the Comics So You Don’t Have To,” hereafter to be shortened to the convenient and easy-to-remember abbreviation IRTCSYDHT, if you can tell me what any of the ladies actually do for a living.)

Anyway, the current storyline revolves around Margo (the pretty but scheming brunette) and Lu Ann (the pretty but somewhat dim blonde) going head to head over the only romantic interest who’s appeared in the last two years, the earth-shatteringly dull Pete. I like that for the most part they are all smiles despite the seething rivalry that has grown up between them. Margo’s happy face in the last panel is particularly funny if you imagine her saying her line in the style of Beavis’ Cornholio persona.

What I want to see more of in this strip (other than sex, obviously) are more storylines that feature Tommie (the pretty but sensible redhead), who only seems to appear as background color to other plots and never attracts a boring, clean-cut boy of her own. Sure, the struggle of blonde and brunette is an archetypical one rooted deep in our collective subconscious, but as a redhead, I demand to see the stories and struggles of my people portrayed on the comics page.

Bonus observations:

  • Lu Ann, no doubt struggling to pay her ludicrously overpriced Manhattan rent, has apparently resorted to eating a box of generic “OATS” for breakfast.
  • Margo is emerging from a door that appears to be a good foot shorter than she is.