Stuck on a Desert Island.

One Situation, Endless Comics.

Welcome Back Everyone!

This week we’re going old-school, and exploring the age-old cartoon setup that is The Desert Island Cartoon. You know the one, they always look a bit like this…

The island must always somehow support an entire palm tree despite clearly having no natural freshwater source, while the vast ocean must be oddly calm and weirdly lake-like.

(I really am so thankful reality or accuracy isn’t required in cartoons.)

Usually, this impossible island also has a bedraggled person stranded on them…

Sometimes (mainly for the sake of dialogue) there’s even two people.

So that’s the basic setup accounted for.

But where did this genre of cartoon start?

Thankfully, I might have the answer…

That’s right - the ENCYCLOPEDIA of New Yorker cartoons! It’s a Two-Tome BEAST of a publication and it’s even got a whole section devoted to Desert Island Cartoons.

Unfortunately, it had no information at all on where the cartoons came from and only offered up that “At The New Yorker, these cartoons made their appearance in the nineteen-thirties”

Of course, there’s been plenty of them since then, and I’ve even submitted one, although why it was never published I’ll never know.

The genre has also obviously extended beyond the page to other kinds of media as well…

Over the years I’ve done a few variations of this comic, usually envisioning what life might be like if I were stuck on the island myself.

…or let’s be honest, more accurately…

Anyway, that’s it for me today, but I’ll pop a blank one in for you below if you feel like having a go at it yourself!

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