of humans. An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and a Green Party member, Artie is a vocal proponent of nonviolence. An episode in which Helen transmogrifies him into human form destabilized his phenotype, and as a result, he now shifts between his original gerbil form and the form of a very tall, attractive, young gay black man with the voice of Ted Koppel. He has a (presumably unrequited) crush on forensic linguist Antonio Smith (see below). Hidden Story: Octavius Winter Octavius Winter was the Narbon family's Evil Attorney during Helen Beta's college years. The storyline in which he appears is told within the filenames of the image files Monday through Saturday. The filenames consist of the date (in mmddyy format) and a few words of the story. Garrity's practice of adding additional words at the end of daily strips begins with the strip for August 17, 2002, near the end of the "Dave Vs. Dave" storyline; the story itself begins with the November 12th strip, during "Class Reunion." The Astonishing Excursions of Helen Narbon & Co. A long-running secondary storyline exists, featuring the Victorian Helen Narbon and her friends (and enemies) engaged in various steampunk exploits. Shaenon (who here identifies herself as "S. K. Garrity") credits influence from "the kind suggestions of Mr. Mark Schumann." It is drawn in rotation with the regular strip and the various other Narbonic creations (listed farther down). Unlike the regular strip, Excursions is presented in brownscale sepia to add to the antique flavor. It is probable that the cast of this storyline are all the progenitors of the regular strip's cast: while dead, Dave meets the ghosts of an earlier Helen and Mell, who are physically identical (except for their ghost tails) to, and dress the same as, the cast of Excursions. Another suggestion that it is the forerunner of Narbonic is that in one episode, Helen finds "the old family artificial gravity formula" - something that does indeed appear in Excursions. Garrity had planned on doing another storyline with Silver Age superhero versions of the characters (note the superhero costumes among the paper-doll outfits), but Excursions ended up lasting until the end of Narbonic's run. Outside the plot line Narbonic's Sundays are dedicated to features other than whatever the characters are up to in the present plot arc. Other features (some regular, others sporadic) make up a large component of Narbonic history and some