Alex Kotzky was born in New York City. After a public school education, Kotzky attended the Art Students League on a scholarship in 1941. He also studied at the Pratt Institute. He wanted to become an illustrator and while he was an art student, he answered a newspaper ad for a comic book artist, and started out working with Chad Grothkopf on such features as 'Johnny Quick', 'Sandman', 'Three Aces' and 'Detective Chimp' for National/DC Comics in 1940.
Starting in the following years, Kotzky drew backgrounds for Will Eisner's 'The Spirit', while also working on 'Blackhawk' and 'Espionage'. After war-time he worked on 'Plastic Man', 'Doll Man', 'Kid Eternity', 'Manhunter' and 'Blackhawk' for Quality Comics, from 1946 to 1951.
He then did some horror, western and war work for Ziff-Davis, and by 1954, Kotzky was freelancing and doing illustrations for medical magazines and advertising agencies (Johnstone and Cushing). With Allen Saunders, he did an advertising strip for Philip Morris, called 'Duke Handy'. At the same time he was ghosting newspaper strips like Milton Caniff's 'Steve Canyon', Elliot Caplin and Stan Drake's 'The Heart of Juliet Jones', and Elliot Caplin and John Cullen Murphy's 'Big Ben Bolt'.
In the late 1950's Kotzky was asked to draw for a new strip project by psychiatrist Nick Dallis for Publishers Syndicate. The strip that developed was 'Apartment 3-G', which made its debut on 8 May 1961. After Dallis died in 1991, Kotzky took over the writing of the strip until his own death on 26 September 1996, in New York City. Kotzky was succeeded by his son Brian, who handed over the strip to Frank Bolle three years later. The strip ran in over 100 newspapers until 22 November 2015.
