my baby's in the white fluffy clouds

The strong feelings come from relating to the characters over time once the author gives up on trying to make each panel funny with some horrid gag and actually lets them develop and grow through interacting with each other a lot. And they might never come for you! The first half-hour or so, at least, is pretty stupid, although you can't just skip it because half of it ends up relevant later and you can't really know which half at the time. It crept up on me. I read a bunch and was like this is dumb, this is dumb, why am I even doing this, and then something happened and I was like "Oh I seem to be completely hooked and will keep reading this most of the time I am awake until I am done now." A lot of the awesome comes from the ways that various bits and pieces gradually fall together and you see that there is a structure and it's always been there (...well almost always, the beginning is still just out of place and awkward and drawn out in my opinion).