Yeah, a lot of newspaper-printed comics haven’t always gone for a big punchline, especially the much older ones like this. Sometimes it’s just charm or a more episodic “I wonder what [familiar character] is getting up to today!”
I’d say even a more modern one like Calvin and Hobbes would fall into a similar category.
Absolutely true. They really are more slow emotion based “day in the life” when printed in a newspaper. I mean I imagine they would have to be just for how many you make when doing them.
Pearls before swine, Zits, Mutts, Baby Blues, Lockhorns, etc and so on. Really rely on simple stories sometimes without much of a punch line. Even Hagar was mostly about how vikings could still have dream homestead blues and dysfunctional marriage as a punchline.
I think the best long running comics connect to that sense of empathy and familiarity.