I keep saying it but those backgrounds are getting really stylized! There They Go-Go-Go is full of bold, elaborate jokes, superb non-sequiturs. When his feet and tail catch fire, the coyote finds a divining rod, and then some water to douse himself with. This is superbly admirable inefficiency. The same strategy continues with another series of prop-ridden, alternatingly simple and compound gags. In other words, the machine is perfectly tooled now. So much so that it has risen to the level of an anthology, or an encyclopedia of comic theory and possibility. A ball o’ nine tails! The whole ladder business. There’s some simultaneously tongue-in-cheek/sincere didacticism. The coyote demonstrates how soon and easily we forget. And yet, watch him as he struggles through the elaborate aftermath. Striving, failing—I must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on—nobility! Right after, those boulders won’t fall when he springs the trap. His attempts to knock the rocks lose, even though he’s standing right beneath them, say two things. He’s an idiot. (“In heaven’s name, what am I doing?”) More, here’s evidence unto conviction, or exaltation of how often and courageously we’ll roll that rock up that hill. Did Mike Maltese (the writer of most all of these treasures) read Camus? Not sure, but Camus sure does resonate with Mike Maltese!