Long-form storytelling is such a big project sometimes that it's helpful to be reminded of some of the mechanics underlying even the most basic of story forms. Comic strips are some of the simplest — consider the physical size limitations, just a few frames, or even only one.
In these short forms the basics really stand out.
The image above encapsulates an entire history of the interaction of two famous characters (permanent war, which the scheming coyote with his technical gadgets always loses to the roadrunner's effortless and almost magical evasions and reversals). Because of that long history, we can read the above image as the ending of a story with a reversal of the usual outcome.
One image, and a long history of character roles/knowledge on the part of the viewer, and we know most of the story already.
Think of all the prior knowledge we had to bring to that image — we did most of the work ourselves. We had to already know they were antagonists, that the coyote almost always lost, that the coyote's means were usually elaborate mechanical devices.
