As you know, in 2005 almost all of the arcs beyond “Interview with the Mad Scientist” were locked behind the paywall. However, it was very easy for me and dozens of other people to guess the URLs of the strip images for most every locked day beyond that point. They obeyed this format: “http://www.moderntales.com/narbonic/narbonic/httpdocs/month##-day##-year##.jpg“

And so I snuck under the wall – and what I saw were wondrous sights and fabulous things. I saw everything that happened to those characters until I came to a stop right here.For the Tuesday of that week was when the image URL changed from
http://www.moderntales.com/narbonic/narbonic/httpdocs/____.jpg
to something else altogether that I could not guess, namely
http://www.moderntales.com/narbonic/_____.jpg

And, as you notice, it stops right in the middle of a very action-packed moment indeed. What a cruel barb of fate! I was deprived of narrative resolution, and with no hope of ever seeing the conclusion until I had purchased it (which, back then, was something I couldn’t do). Over those subsequent days I felt an unusual sense of frustration and loss, which in turn fermented my gradual, growing affection for the comic and its characters into a strong sense of longing. And so, several months later when I received my first credit card, my first purchase was a ten dollar subscription to MT, made with an addled, giddy heart.

So there it is: if there was any one explanation for my inexplicable teenaged infatuation with this comic, then it is because it was behind a partially broken paywall. True story!