Is there a way to google or otherwise search for a specific instance of a particular comic strip or cartoon, based on caption or dialog text?
Case in point: one of my coworkers today sent out an email informing the group that she had reserved a particular conference room at a particular time “from now to infinity”, in case we ever needed to use it. The first thing that popped into my head was the Dilbert strip where the P.H.B. tells Carol to do something similar, and Carol says “Sorry, some other sociopath already beat you to it.” The P.H.B. walks away muttering “I hate being the slowest sociopath.”
So I tried to see if I could find a copy of that particular strip to email back to her. I entered “Dilbert slowest sociopath” into Google and got about ten hits, but most appeared to be references to that particular strip, and none got me to the strip itself. In some ways this doesn’t surprise me, because the text I’m searching for (other than the title of the strip) isn’t text as such, but represented within the graphic of the cartoon, so it may not be searchable.
Any ideas? Suggestions? Am I trying to do the impossible here? Do I just need to hunker down and plow through fifteen years of Dilbert archives until I find the one I’m looking for?
I think you’re right in that the biggest issue is the text of a comic strip is not searchable.
Aside from that, I think part of the problem is actually that it’s a Dilbert cartoon. If I remember correctly (from when I was doing a newsletter for my IT group at another company) Scott Adams is extremely unforgiving when it comes to unauthorized use of his comic strips - using it in my newsletter was specifically a no-no. I imagine that he’s cracked down on websites using those images (Gary Larson of The Far Side has taken similar measures, IIRC).
So unless someone (wrongly) uses the image, and places the text of the strip in actual text form alongside it, it would probably be challenging to search it.
The legitimate source for Dilbert comics, United Media, only archives the past month’s worth of comics; for any earlier ones I guess they want you to buy a book.
Luckily, there’s a website someone came up with that you can put a description or line from a Dilbert strip and it will give you a brief description and location.
The strip in question ran on December 4, 2001, and is reprinted on page 18 of the strip compilation When Body Language Goes Bad.