You would think that after decades, cartoonists like myself would have wrung out every last drop of humour from two of the most symbolic settings in the cartoon world – the Pearly Gates and the Desert Island.
Yet, somehow, they keep producing timeless comedy that continues to entertain readers and prompting fresh ways to make us all laugh, and sometimes think.
Maybe we draw the gates and the island because they remind us what cartoons do best – open up the impossible while treating topics which are deeply human.
The Pearly Gates cartoon typically features a meeting with St Peter in which Heaven’s ‘bureaucracy’ meets morality and souls wait patiently for their final interview with the Lord.
The Desert Island cartoon by contrast is a meeting with loneliness; a single palm tree on a small patch of sand, surrounded by suspiciously calm water.
Cartoonists are drawn to these minimalism scenes not because they’re easy, but because they’re empty.
The lack of clutter gives plenty of room for ideas and the ultimate stage for exaggeration, stripping away detail until only the essence remains.
In cartooning as in spiritual practice, often less is more. The fewer props you draw, the louder the idea speaks.
Both scenes wonderfully spare in detail: a gate, a cloud, a palm tree, a patch of sand. But those empty spaces invite imagination.
Add a touch of the absurd, a dash of fantasy, or a wink of the surreal, and suddenly the familiar becomes irresistible proof that even the simplest scenes can spark a journey through the boundless realms of our imagination.
These two settings act as shorthand for everything cartoonists love – isolation and judgment, survival and redemption, humour and hope.
They’re not clichés so much as open canvases, ready to absorb whatever the modern world throws their way, giving cartoonist the freedom to explore.
I think the Pearly Gates cartoon and the Desert Island cartoon are the twin pillars of endless humour because one deals with the culmination of life and with ultimate connection while the other evokes abandonment, isolation, and mortality. One asks for the Lord’s perfect judgment, the other for survival.
Between them lies a full spectrum of possibilities for human comedy from the weight of moral reflection and responsibility to the ridiculous; from the unknowable afterlife to the middle of nowhere.
On the desert island we hope to be rescued by someone; at the pearly gates our faith gives us hope that our rescue has already been secured by Christ.
There’s a certain genius in their simplicity. With just a few lines, an artist can drop a reader into an instantly recognisable scene.
Everyone knows where they are. The setting does all the heavy lifting so the joke can take flight.
The Pearly Gates and the Desert Island are characters in their own right, perfect amplifiers that hum quietly while the punch line lands.
A gate is never just a gate. An island is never just an island. And they give us perspective – they are about laughing at the absurdity of our limits, the persistence of our imagination, and our need for hope.
In the end, whether we find ourselves sketching clouds or coconuts, for cartoonists, the joy is in the drawing.
The gates and the island remain our perfect playgrounds. There are no last jokes, only new angles.
Paul Dorin is The Catholic Weekly cartoonist.
