2799: Original, Original Strip

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Original, Original Strip

Made by: Mr. Skullhead

Explanation

This submission is essentially the original version of the 2002-10-20 strip as printed in the newspapers. As the author's notes state, digital archives and book reprints alter the strip's dialogue due to the original lines being from the Robert Frost poem Nothing Gold Can Stay; the poem in question, first published in 1923, was indeed still copyrighted in the United States (Frost's country of origin) at the time of both the strip's original newspaper run and its submission to Square Root of Minus Garfield, but entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2019.

The presentation of the version of the strip with the replacement dialogue on GoComics, as linked to in the author's notes, was subject to coloring errors; the Garfield wiki on Fandom has a copy of the strip with the replacement dialogue and correct coloring, drawn from the former garfield.com site, here.

The author writes:

This is the original unedited strip as it appeared in my local newspaper. The strip as it appears in the Garfield archive, and in the "Garfield's Sunday Finest" book, is completely different. The poem is changed, and Garfield just says poets, instead of Robert Frost, in the last panel. I wonder why it was changed? Are Robert Frost's poems copyrighted?

Now that it's fall, I thought it was a good time to send this in.

Faux original strip: 2002-10-20.

Transcript

{Garfield's walking along contentedly; surrounded by blowing leaves}
Garfield: "Nature's first green is gold her hardest hue to hold."
Garfield: "Her early leaf's a flower; but only so an hour."
Garfield: "Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief."
{Garfield has now stopped, and is looking down on the leaves}
Garfield: "So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay."
{A large VOOOO sound effect}
{Jon is shown holding a leaf blower. Garfield's fur has been blown off. The leaves are gone}
Garfield: I doubt Robert Frost would have penned any loving odes to leaf blowers.