To follow up on the Doodle first Caption first cartoon argument, here is John O’Brien. He ponders the question of no caption, though I figure no caption belongs in the Doodle first school. Cool to see the process evolve through quick working drawings.
O’Brien writes:

I’m definitely a doodle-firster, as I’m very much a visual person, and my cartoons are mostly captionless. I begin with an inkling of something on paper. It could be a common image, an inanimate object, a visual pun, a cliché, or whatever.

I move from one thumbnail sketch to another, adding and subtracting elements, until it morphs into something, often totally different from my original concept, that I think is funny and worthy of submission.

It might develop quickly, but often it takes weeks or months of bouncing around in my sketchbook before it works.

The illustration below shows my process for this idea.