CSotD: The lease expires at Apartment 3G

Mike Peterson Published: November 22, 2015 1 minute 4 comments

Today is the last installment of Apartment 3G, and Tom Spurgeon has a hale-and-farewell that is worth your time.

I used to see the strip in one of the Chicago papers — the Trib or the Sun, I forget which — but only read it because it was on the page. Like Mary Worth, it was pure soap opera, and I didn't find the talking-head format engaging.

It wasn't offensive. It just wasn't of interest to me.

But it sure was of interest to the merchants of snark.

Spurgeon notes that "there was a devoted fanbase that liked to make fun of its stiffness and oddities. How much the creators, particularly (writer Margaret) Shulock, played to this kind of presentation I've seen debated by grown people with college degrees."

Perhaps. But, as a grown person with a college degree, I've got to say that a little of that goes a long, long way.

Mw060910
I enjoyed the Aldo Kelrast storyline in Mary Worth a decade ago, and you have to assume it was a nudge, nudge, wink, wink to the critics, but it's over and we've all moved on, haven't we?

Judging from the ongoing snarkfest in the current comments section of that strip, I guess we haven't.

It makes me think of the nerdish kid who tries to laugh along with the bullies in hopes that it will get them to stop picking on him, only it just makes them sneer and pick on him some more.

The analogy doesn't end there, either: Sometimes it's obvious why a kid is targeted. He's got a disability, he's defensive, he wears cheap, unstylish clothes, he answers too eagerly in class.

Other times, it's hard to figure out why a quiet, inoffensive kid suddenly becomes an object of sadistic fascination for the in-crowd. But once the crosshairs are on him, it doesn't matter why, or if there even was a reason at all.

Well, no mystery about why certain strips are targeted for this treatment: It goes back to the City Paper in Baltimore, where a group of hipster bullies were given a column in which they made fun of the strips in the Sun that didn't come up to their exacting standards, and it became popular on line, putting the "merchants" in "merchants of snark."

Tough luck for those particular strips, because, like the picked-on kid in school, most of their current tormentors have no reason to bully them except that it's been proclaimed cool, and they want to be cool.

I might respect them if they found new strips to ridicule, or if they ever let up on the strips that have, since those days, changed hands and improved. But they are neither inventive enough or bright enough to bring anything new and interesting to the game.

Anyway, the quiet, slightly odd kid was never doing me any harm, and neither was Apt. 3G or Mary Worth or any of the other strips with the sad misfortune to run in the Baltimore Sun.

Hence the Prime Directive.

Because I never particularly liked Apartment 3-G, but I've always hated assholes.

By contrast, for instance:

Mandrake Aug 1943
This is not to say I can't tell when a strip is veering off into the swamp. It's just an issue of how you respond.

A year ago August, I noted that the Vintage Mandrake Sunday strips were facing some lead-time issues, given that the war had just started and Falk did long, extended stories that could run into problems depending on how things went in the real world.

At that point, he wrapped up a relatively (for him) brief story about fighting them dirty Japs, and then launched into the one that is now running and I rather think neither Tojo nor Hitler nor Douglas MacArthur were likely to do anything that might disrupt this adventure.

Today's is from August, 1943 and I'd try to explain it but, while I can tell you that their plane has been captured and immobilized by a group of people who live up in the clouds and travel around suspended in chairs attached to flocks of birds, well …

It would be very easy to unleash the snark, but it would also be redundant. This makes the Aldo Kelrast storyline look like Eugene O'Neill, and I say that, not with sarcasm but in wondering stupefaction.

As I said in that previously linked posting, I mostly read Mandrake for the camp value to begin with, but I can't wait for Sundays lately, to catch up with King Ozon, Princess Aera and the happenings in the land of Aar.

As close to politics as I'm getting

Tmrkt151122
This being the Sunday before (American) Thanksgiving, there has been the usual glut of imperiled turkey jokes.

Brewster Rockit had the funny one, and it was really funny.

(Hey, the Prime Directive says we don't single out comics for snark. I didn't single out anybody.)

Okay, a little more politics, for the holidays

Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.

Comments ⁴

michael s

I don’t mind the snark as I mind the hate. The print newspaper comic page has often been a place of frustration to the young adult reader, the page seemingly a salute to inertia.
To turn one’s boredom and frustration over the lack of change by attacking the strips through angry humor is a last desperate attempt to find some entertainment on the page.
But simple pointless and repetitive hate to certain strips and its cartoonists grows weary quickly. Hate Funky Winkerbean? Thanks for sharing now stop reading it. But again as the printed page shrinks in numbers and size it can be frustrating to realize how powerless the reader is for change up against the editors afraid of a few vocal readers demands to stay the same.
This is why I read my comics online and not in print. I am not “forced” to read those I despise and thus find comics still a pleasant experience.
I have to admit I read the final few months of Apartment 3-G with disbelief. One advantage webcomics have over newspaper comics is the readers interaction with the cartoonist. Apartment 3-G might have been less unsettling and more fun if the cartoonists could have interacted with the readers. They could have given readers interested in the other characters future more closure. If they went surreal on purpose we would have enjoyed it more, but you were always afraid laughing at a dying strip done by fading talent trying their best to be serious.

Mike Peterson

Here’s an important distinction: The little old ladies who love Mary Worth and hate Lio tell the editor. The snarkmeisters are just amusing each other, so they have no impact on what’s on the page.
I promise you, if a bunch of 18-24’s began contacting the editor with requests, they’d be heard. Not that editors would decide to only serve them, but they’d sure get a place at the table.
I did a series of focus group meetings with readers before the paper I was working at went through a design change, and the first of four or five meetings was eye-opening.
But then the people setting them up got lazy and stopped balancing the demographics and I was just meeting with people who were home to answer the phone between 9 and 5 when the schedulers called. Yes, retired people.
That’s like a metaphor for how newspapers have managed to self-destruct, but I wish younger readers would step up, because the old folks are in frequent contact with the paper.

Mary in Ohio

I have been puzzled by all the hate directed at Tom Batiuk. True, he’s a local guy so I’m prejudiced, but I still enjoy his strips and don’t get the hate. I agree – stop reading it. I also don’t get the hostility the fans of Lio direct at Heart of the City. Good thing they’re apparently too young to remember Tatulli’s “Bent Halos.”

Austin

the two blogs i read daily are comic strip of the day and comics curmudgeon. I enjoy reading your insight and stories and i enjoy the curmudgeon for laughs. it doesnt seem mean spirited more like poking fun at your friend than the odd kid. thanks to that site i have found an appreciation for the older strips especially apartment 3g of a few years agoe that i didnt have before. some so called humour strips are so relentlessly unfunny but that site makes them funny. of course there are legitimatly funny comics too which i come to your site for.

Comments are closed.