I think I've posted this elsewhere before, but what the hell...
I saw QC linked a couple of times and tried to follow it from the beginning. Got about 10-12 strips in before the indie references left me cold.
Then one day, a few months (maybe a year?) later I followed a link again, and saw Hanners sledding down a hill.
I had to know what led up to that, and started hitting the "previous" button. Before I know it, I'd gone 100 pages or more backwards through the archive... it was fascinating, watching the plot lines devolve, seeing the characters come into play, it was a weird way to get to know them. Then I went back to the beginning - I was already hooked, I had to know how it all started, and got even more hooked as I saw the story unfold.
It took about 2 weeks to meet myself in the archive, following the new strips forward the whole time. That pretty much did it for me. I have a hard time when I can't see the comic for any reason, and I even wrote Jeph an email praising his creation (he never answered, but hey, I didn't realize there were tens - no, hundreds of tousands of us fans). Then I found the forum about a month later.
Been a happy man ever since.