If the gag is complicated, you spend more time thinking about the way you’re drawing it.
At the end of the '60s, I was trying to enter the world of comics.
Fortunately, cartooning is not a job. It's something like eating or sleeping.
Comics is a great medium to get a lot of stories out.
Sometimes, you start with the drawing and then the gag comes to you in the middle of it. That is when you start working on the solution of the gag, which is composition, placing, equilibrium, and character design.
Freedom is not an individual effort. Yours comes only when you grant others theirs