Nicholas Dallis; Creator of ‘Apartment 3-G,’ ‘Rex Morgan’

Nicholas P. Dallis, the psychiatrist who fathered “Judge Parker” and “Rex Morgan M.D.” and constructed “Apartment 3-G” out of what he called his “innate sense of serial drama,” is dead.

The comic strip creator was 79 when he died Saturday of undisclosed causes in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Today, the strips he began with the young Morgan in 1948--a time when Dallis was practicing psychiatry in Ohio--are published in more than 400 U.S. newspapers with an estimated readership of more than 60 million.

Their success enabled him to retire from medicine more than 30 years ago although he kept current by reading specialty journals and attending medical education courses.

Although Dallis never drew any of the multitudes of characters who inhabited his strips over the years, he controlled their actions and wrote the stories weeks in advance of publication. The story lines were then turned over to professional artists.

With Morgan, Dallis kept particularly current, warning pregnant women about the dangers of fetal alcohol syndrome or discussing the epidemic use of phencyclidine, or PCP.

Medical topics also are frequently discussed in the other two strips, bringing him honors from medical and legal organizations.

Dallis told the Associated Press in 1983 that he was a student at Temple University’s School of Medicine when he had the idea for a medical comic strip. He was given little encouragement from publishers and established a successful psychiatric practice in Toledo before reviving the notion. That time it was an immediate success.

He is survived by his wife, Sally, a former nurse who he said was the inspiration for “Apartment 3-G,” two daughters and a son.