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Alex is a British cartoon strip by Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor. It first appeared in the short-lived ''London Daily News'' in 1987. It moved to ''The Independent'' later that year and then to the ''Daily Telegraph'' in 1992. A translated version was published in the German newspaper Financial Times Deutschland.〔(German Alex comic strips )〕 It has also been published translated into Dutch for some years in the main financial newspaper of the Netherlands, "Het Financieele Dagblad" (FD), around the turn of the century. The strip with its storylines-with-a-twist proved so popular that, in the course of its transfer to the ''Telegraph'', it was preceded by a nationwide billboard campaign. The strip occurs in 'real-time', i.e. time passes and characters age and develop as in real life. Alex and Penny married in the strip's early days and had a son called Christopher, who grew up, went to school, had work experience and has now started college. Alex and Penny themselves are now middle-aged. ==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's 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. During Christmas times, the strip usually takes on storylines featuring fantasy characters and situations, such as visits to Santa Claus (2006, 2009) or a trip to Narnia (2005). In 2012 a 15-part storyline was published, featuring Alex taking up his boss Cyrus's job after the latter committed suicide, but it turned out that Cyrus killed himself because he found the bank was doomed, while the kind of Alex would be persecuted for causing all despair among the people. 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alex (comic strip)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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