YOU would think that after decades, cartoonists 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 finding fresh ways to make us laugh.
Maybe we draw the gates and the island because they remind us what cartoons do best – open up the impossible. Both are 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 hold the boundless reach of 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 cartoonists the freedom to explore.
The Pearly Gates cartoon and the Desert Island cartoon are the twin pillars of endless humour.
One deals with the end of life; the other, with being stranded in it.
One asks for judgment, the other for survival.
And between them lies the full spectrum of human comedy – the moral reflection, the ridiculous, and the eternal shrug that binds the afterlife or the middle of nowhere together.
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 cartoon is greeted by St. Peter, where Heaven’s bureaucracy meets morality and souls wait patiently for their final interview.
The Desert Island cartoon, by contrast is greeted by loneliness, a single palm tree on a small patch of sand, surrounded by suspiciously calm water endlessly reinventing ways to make small talk about eternity and survival.
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: hope, regret, survival, isolation.
The fewer props you draw, the louder the idea speaks.
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.
They’re about perspective – about laughing at the absurdity of our limits and the persistence of our imagination.
In the end, whether we find ourselves sketching clouds or coconuts, the joy is in the drawing.
The gates and the island remain perfect playgrounds for cartoonists.
There are no last jokes, only new angles.
By Cartoonist Paul DORIN
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