For an optimist, the cookie is chocolately brown. For a pessimist, the cookie is uncoloured vanilla.

Iris and Jim are very difficult to snark, unless Lynn Johnston goes on some tangent and tries to act like she has researched aphasia and strokes, which so clearly she had not before launching into the “Jim Richards has a stroke” storyline. The idea truly mystifies me, because if Lynn had any sense as to who her audience is, then she should know that if she messed it up, she would be called on the carpet by her older audience.

Clearly after all the errors of the past, Lynn is going with the aphasia jokes she can’t mess up. In other words, stick to the jokes where Iris and Jim are having a hard time talking to each other, and leave the doctors and therapists out of it. The unfortunate side effect is that it makes it hard to find material from which to snark the strip.

Tomorrow’s strip: More of the same + a pirate joke.