Why will nobody publish my religious cartoons?

I am having very little success in getting my collection of cartoons of great religious founders published. Perhaps it is because I am not known as a draughtsman and publications are notoriously conservative in hiring new talent. It is all very dispiriting. My drawings are, I think, puckish and yet respectful. For example, there is one of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, the man somehow regarded as divine by Rastafarians. He is depicted in a game of ten-pin bowling with Benito Mussolini, the controversial former leader of Italy. Both men seem to be enjoying themselves — Benito is holding a pint of lager while Selassie is biting into an almond Magnum, waiting their turn to roll. They are part of a foursome with Charlie Stayt, the hugely talented BBC Breakfast presenter, and Walter Ulbricht, the widely admired former leader of the German Democratic Republic. Walter has just rolled for a strike and is looking very self-satisfied, as his side are now well in the lead. But Benito and Selassie do not seem to mind.

Friends looking at these cartoons describe them as ‘Hogarthian’ and are astonished and depressed nobody is prepared to publish them. There is a more sombre drawing of Buddha attending a counselling session for the morbidly obese — but that cartoon is the exception. Most of the vignettes show these great figures engaging in cheerful leisure pursuits, to advance the agreeable notion that no matter how eminent, wise and godly these people were, they valued a bit of ‘down time’ and ‘chilling’, as modern parlance has it. So, Zoroaster is skateboarding with members of S Club 7, Jesus Christ is threatening to lamp an opposition supporter during a tense local derby game and Mohammed, PBUH, is shown on a Ryanair Weekend City Break to Paris, posing for a selfie in front of the Eiffel Tower.