well, git is good at preserving the symlink, that's for sure...

download_xkcd.py

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-../xkcd/download_xkcd.py

download_xkcd.py

@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python2
+
+import requests
+from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
+
+FIRST_COMIC = 1
+LAST_COMIC = 1633
+
+def download(img_url, i):
+    img = requests.get(img_url, stream=True)
+    file_name = "%04d_%s" %(i, img_url.split("/")[-1])
+    with open(file_name ,"wb") as f:
+        for chunk in img.iter_content(chunk_size=1024):
+            if chunk:
+                f.write(chunk)
+        print "Got %s" %file_name
+
+
+def run():
+    for i in range(FIRST_COMIC, LAST_COMIC + 1):
+        p = requests.get("http://xkcd.com/%d/" %i)
+        soup = BeautifulSoup(p.text, "html.parser")
+        div = soup.find("div", id="comic")
+        if div:
+            img = div.find("img")
+            if img:
+                src = img["src"]
+                if src.startswith("//"):
+                    download("http:" + src, i)
+        
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    run()