Alex (comic Strip) - Style and Humour

Style and Humour

The humour in the strip derives from wordplay and twist endings related to Alex's world of yuppie values, right-wing politics, obsession with appearances, displays of wealth and schemes to stay one up in the world of international finance.

Peattie and Taylor are reputed to work closely with a variety of London financial contacts to ensure that their strips accurately reflect the recent scandals and rumours which pass around the City. Much gossip has circulated as to the likely inspiration for some of the characters. A storyline in March 2009 had one of Alex' old colleagues leave the city to become a teacher, coinciding with a British government plan to ease the amount of time spent on teacher training and encouraging "fantastic mathematicians... who would have once perhaps gone into the City but now actually might be more interested in a career in teaching".

The most common kind of joke features a conversation between the characters, where in the final frame a twist ending becomes apparent - the context of the conversation was not what the reader had supposed, usually reflecting on the protagonists' materialistic values and priorities.

For instance, in a restaurant, an embarrassed Alex apologises to the maître d' after his dinner guest answers a call on his mobile, which has been frowned upon in the past. The maître d's claim that the restaurant's policy on phones is very relaxed these days does not alleviate Alex's embarrassment since his concern was due to being seen with a companion who was not using the latest model, and not (as the reader may have supposed) due to talking on a cellphone in a restaurant.

Another kind of strip which appears occasionally consists of only two large frames, showing two different characters, or the same character in two different situations, giving a monologue composed of almost exactly the same words, but which, in the different situations, have very different meanings.

The strip has sometimes taken on storylines which feature fantasy characters and situations. These storylines are usually published at Christmas time. In 2000, for example, Alex's colleague Clive made a pact with the Devil and found himself working in Investment Bank Hell. In December 2005, they visited Narnia (coinciding with the recently released film) and met imaginary characters such as the headhunter Alex always claimed to be meeting when trying to get a big bonus from his boss, or a girlfriend Clive claimed to have had at university. In 2006 they went to Lapland where they bought up Father Christmas' business, outsourcing the toy-making department away from the elves and over to Asia where Hindus and Buddhists would not be paid extra for working over the Christmas holidays. However it turns out that Alex had dreamed this whole scenario up after he had fallen asleep whilst watching England's disastrous handling of the 2006-07 Ashes cricket series. At Christmas 2007 Alex and Clive visited a Philip Pullman universe, where they met giant marauding bears and correctly predicted that this was what the stock market held in store for 2008. The 2008 festive season saw Alex and Clive being tortured by a mob of medieval peasants for usury. At Yuletide 2009 Alex and Clive revisited their ex-client Santa Claus, whose business has now gone bust as a result of the inappropriate and self-serving advice they gave him back in 2006.

The complexities of the jokes has meant that the strip has often had to take time off (i.e., not appear for two or more weeks) while the writers come up with new material.