The Comic Strip Big Nate and its Colby Connection
Lincoln Peirce, who draws the strip, got his start at the Colby Echo
One of the first things Lincoln Peirce did when he arrived at Colby as a first-year student in 1981 was go to the office of the Colby Echo and pitch the student newspaper on a comic strip.
That strip, which ran in the Echo until Peirce graduated in 1985, was called Third Floor, named after his room on the third floor of Coburn Hall. It was about typical college knuckleheads, Peirce said over breakfast recently. He added that it was derivative of Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury, and probably ripped off Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County.
“From a career standpoint, that for me was an important step. Just making something that other people would see instead of just doing something for myself,” Peirce said. “Making a deadline, and improving over time. From my freshman year to my senior year, I could see that I was getting better at it.”
It was Peirce finding his artistic voice. That voice is heard loud and clear in his long-running strip Big Nate.
Big Nate debuted in January 1991 and is now carried in more than 400 newspapers worldwide. The strip is the ongoing tale of 11-year-old Nate Wright, a sixth grader at Public School 38, and his friends, family, and teachers. The comic strip has spawned a series of books for young readers, as well as compilations of the daily strips, an animated television series, and an online video game.
Art major at Colby
Rick Bisson ’88, a friend of Peirce’s since their days as Colby roommates, recalled Peirce as a big music fan (Peirce hosts a weekly show on WMPG, a radio station at the University of Southern Maine, on which he plays classic country from 1935 to 1965), who also made extra money typing papers for other students. The discipline it takes to create a daily strip was already in Peirce then, Bisson said.
“I have 10-year-old grand twins who are huge Big Nate fans,” Bisson said.
An art major at Colby, Peirce pointed to professors Abbott Meader and Harriett Matthews as influences on his academic path. Matthews supervised his independent study project on comic strips, Peirce said.
“(Peirce) was thinking about his interest in sports and cartooning. He was always a quiet guy, but one who could speak about a wide range of subjects and turn it into humor with a sharp edge,” Meader said. “His humor was not dark, but edgy.”
Peirce began submitting strip proposals to syndicates as far back as his first year at Colby, collecting form-letter rejections. Peirce played with ideas for a number of strips, including one set in a zoo. He didn’t know a thing about zoos, and couldn’t draw animals particularly well. He was just trying to hit on something different.
“I got one very encouraging rejection and that lit a fire under me to keep trying,” he said.
Write what you know
In 1989 Peirce connected with Sarah Gillespie, an editor with United Media, who offered him feedback artists have heard for as long as there’s been art. Write what you know. Having been a teacher at St. Francis Xavier High, an all-boys school in New York City, Peirce decided that a strip set in a school made sense.
The Big Nate daily strip chugged along modestly for close to two decades. Peirce hoped to branch into books, but was finding closed doors. A relationship with Jeff Kinney, creator of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series, helped open them.
A huge fan of Big Nate while a student at the University of Maryland, Kinney began corresponding with Peirce and sharing his artwork. On a promotional tour for one of the early Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, Kinney came to Portland. The friends had lunch, and Kinney offered to make introductions to people in the publishing industry.
It was then Peirce learned publishers wanted Big Nate illustrated novels, a medium he wasn’t sure he could pull off. Peirce sent editor Phoebe Yeh the first Big Nate book, Big Nate: In a Class by Himself, chapter by chapter, a practice he’s continued with each subsequent book.
As the book came together, Yeh told Peirce, “This book is going to be on the New York Times bestseller list.”
“I thought she was out of her mind,” he said.
The timing of the book couldn’t have been better. As young readers and their parents waited for Kinney’s next Wimpy Kid book, booksellers suggested Big Nate. The eight Big Nate novels have been published around the world, in dozens of languages, selling more than 33 million copies.
The empire grows
As the Big Nate empire grew, Peirce was able to be selective with projects. He turned down offers for a live-action Big Nate television series or movie. Nate is a cartoon, perpetually 11 years old. Peirce didn’t want to cast a 10-year-old, only to have the kid shaving when it was time for season two or the sequel.
Peirce worked with Nickelodeon on both the Big Nate animated series, which ran for two seasons on the Paramount+ streaming service, and Max and the Midknights, based on his books about a girl, Max, in the Middle Ages and her quest to become a knight.
Max and the Midknights was born from a conversation with Kinney and other children’s book creators when they did a fundraiser for Oklahoma schools whose libraries had been destroyed by tornadoes. Could Peirce write a book with a female main character that would appeal to both girls and boys? The first Max and the Midknights book was published in 2019, with two more since.
Turning his work into animated television has been a surreal experience, Peirce said, adding that Nickelodeon has been great to work with and has been respectful of his source material.
“My experience has been that you do have to go into it with your eyes open. It’s not going to be an exact copy of your book. In the case of Big Nate, they made a show that I would say is much more fanciful and quirky than the comic strip,” Peirce said. “The Max and the Midknights show includes more story. They made a commitment of 40 episodes, and there’s not enough story in my books, so they filled it out.”
For the love of the Red Sox
In the early 1990s, Peirce and his wife, artist Jessica Gandolf, decided to move back to New England. Raised in Durham, N.H., Peirce wanted to be closer to family. Gandolf was on board; her only request was that they settle near the ocean. They chose Portland after visiting friends in the city and scouting it out, and have lived there since.
“This sounds goofy, but I wanted to be closer to my sports teams. I grew up just loving the Red Sox, the Bruins, UNH hockey,” Peirce said. “When I’d gone to Colby, I’d come down to Portland to buy art supplies. … Never going to leave. Portland’s great.”
Peirce said he can see a day coming when he’ll semi-retire the Big Nate strip, making just a Sunday feature. After almost 35 years, it’s harder to keep the series fresh.
“I still feel like I have a lot of stories to tell. I just think as far as Big Nate goes, you can only tell so many jokes about sixth grade,” Peirce said. “There are things I return to over and over again, and the challenge is to find fresh ways. Ok, how am I going to make him getting his school picture taken funny this year?”
Until that day comes, a journey that began with a visit to the Colby Echo will keep rolling along.
