How do you compose your cartoons? Here’s some advice from the 1940′s:
“In cartooning, composition is used solely to point up your gag or draw attention to the action of your characters in a story. Composition is the tool you use to add clarity to your work, much as re-writing and elimination add punch to your gag or story. You must be aware of it with every line you draw.
Like politics, composition is a subject people can argue about forever and arrive nowhere. There are no hard and fast rules – your composition-sense will grow to be as personal to you as your style of drawing. However, certain things catch and interest the reader’s eye, others repel it.”

–Famous Artists Cartoon Course – Lesson 11 Pg 7