Ahh! That one
Posted by Kunal on August 12, 2006
I love Calvin & Hobbes. I love the philosophical undertones in many of the comic strips created by the sublime genius of Bill Waterson. Many times it so happens that I want to go back and read a particular strip. Inspite of living in an age where finding information on obscure topics is a mindless task, unfortunately finding a particular comic strip is almost impossible for many reasons. Thankfully, I found just the right tool to do my bidding.
http://www.transmogrifier.org/ch/comics/search.cgi
Update: Another C&H search engine (thanks to Anish) http://reemst.com/calvin_and_hobbes/stripsearch
Ramanand said
Thanks for the url. I was planning to create an index of my own and was trying to figure out the best way to extract the text. But I’d still like to have a locally searchable version some day in the future – but this is a good substitute until then.
Kunal said
Extract the text? That will be very hard I think. Almost impossible.
Another good thing with this index is that the creator has used folksonomy (tags) to index the strips. This is very important and it cannot be done by just automatically extracting text.
I think a good way to index comic strips is by creating a wiki for them. Its a lot of work for a single person (I wonder how the Calvin and Hobbes guy did it all by himself). This way people can tag individual comic strips and collaboratively the entire collection can become available.
Another major problem with comic strips is linking to them. Syndication and other stuff which i cannot quite comprehend makes it very difficult to easily access comic strips on the net.
Salil said
A better search engine:
http://reemst.com/calvin_and_hobbes/stripsearch
Hat tip: Anish B.
Kunal said
I prefer the one which I linked to simply because that one shows the actual strip and not just textual summary of the strip.
Thanks for the link anyway.
Rico said
Thanks Kunal, as a fellow C&H fan, you’ve done me great service. :)
Btw, do you have The Complete Calvin and Hobbes? Along with The Complete Far Side, I plan to buy it.