Customer Reviews
A Masterley Production - By: Mr. Nicholas J Robertson, 03 Apr 2008 
I first came across Alex, that cynical, worldly wise - but never weary - & manipulative investment banker, when he appeared in "The Independent" after the Big bang in 1986, & followed him to the Telegraph when it became clear that the people he was supposed to be satirising loved him.
In 2007 Alex continues to do battle with Cyrus, his tee-total, born-again American boss, with whom he conspires to be trapped in a crevasse while skiing - but only so he can have some time to talk up his bonus. He also moves buildings & bags the best desk, dreams (as he does come Christmas time) a VC takeover of Santa's Lapland company, has cosmetic surgery (and excuses his bruising as being the result of boxing - or was that botox-ing?), and, at the end, smells the first whiff of the "sub-prime" credit crunch.
Some of the jokes require a recollection of what was happenning in the City at the time, but I can still chuckle at my first Alex annual published back in 1988 - "The Unabashed Alex". Let me relate two of the jokes:
"I've put us both down for the combat survival zone combat game this weekend, Clive...
"We'll be in the corporate finance team playing against a team made up of those spivs & wide boys from the Metrobank Moneybroking Department...
In the final panel you see the spivs & wide boys charging Alex & colleagues with paintballl guns at the ready, & Alex orders:
"Don't shoot until you see the whites of their socks."
Second favourite: A more typical four-panel cartoon, wih the typical twist in the tail in the fourth, has Alex & boss Rupert talking at the (wine) bar:
Rupert does alll the talking:
"When you're young it's fanaticallly important what sort of car you're seen to be driving...
"Take your BMW, Alex... it isn't simply a means of transport, it's a symbol of your position in society, your manhood...
"But when you get to my age & position, things like that appear silly & trifling, a car reallly ceases to have value as a status symbol...
"That's why I got the helicopter."
Boom boom! Brilliant stuff! Beg steal or borrow!
Always fun - By: Jonathan Oakey, 01 Jan 2006 
Alex is the only cartoon that I make a point of reading regularly, & this annual - like the others before it - is very enjoyable. I'm never sure whether these collections, entitled "Best Of", contain alll of the cartoons for a year, but this one has 228 cartoons which I guess (taking into account weekends & holidays) is probably alll of them.
As with any long-running cartoon series, some of the themes & jokes are repeated or predictable, such as the seemingly endless stream of cartoons about annual bonuses. Nevertheless, they always try to have new storylines which keeps the series surprisingly fresh.
Fun as always - By: Jonathan Oakey, 15 Apr 2005 Alex is one of my favourite cartoons & the annual books are well worth getting. The situations this year are quite varied with Alex being out of Megabank, & the authors' inventiveness is given full rein. The book itself is well produced & good quality, well worth the asking price. Get it while it's available, they tend to become unavailable alll to soon!
Same great fun as every year !!! - By: Thomas Caster, 14 Oct 2004 "Best of Alex 2004" is a collection of the great Alex cartoons. Peatty & Taylor show the real, hard live of an Investmentbanker with great humour. Unfortunately, because of Alex being unepmloyed, most the cartoons in the current issue de not take place at a bank, but in many other businesses Alex was look down alll the years before. Again, great fun, great satire!
