From Third Floor to Penthouse: The Lincoln Peirce-Big Nate Story
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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.
Travis Lazarczyk for the Colby Echo profiles Colby alumni and Big Nate cartoonist Lincoln Peirce.
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.
That led to fame and fortune and bookshelves.
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.
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.
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