Lincoln Peirce

Lincoln Peirce

Peirce at the 2012 New York Comic Con.
Born Lincoln Peirce
October 23, 1963 (age 51)
Iowa, USA
Occupation Cartoonist
Known for Big Nate comic strip
(1991 – )

Lincoln Peirce (pronounced "Purse"[1]) is an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the Big Nate comic strip.

Early life

Peirce grew up in Durham, New Hampshire and attended Colby College in Maine, where he created a weekly comic strip called "Third Floor" for the school newspaper. He later earned a graduate degree from Brooklyn College and also studied at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He taught art and coached baseball at Xavier High School, a boys' high school in New York City, for three years before moving to Maine in 1992 and started writing.

Career

Peirce is the creator of the comic strip Big Nate, which debuted in 1991 and appears in 300 newspapers in the US and online daily at www.gocomics.com, and is featured on the website Poptropica, www.poptropica.com. He has also written several animated shorts for Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. A fan and collector of classic country music, Peirce also hosts a local radio show devoted to honky tonk and western swing on WMPG.

In addition to the Big Nate comic strip, Peirce is the author and illustrator of the New York Times bestselling Big Nate novel series. His Big Nate books have been featured on Good Morning America and in the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post.

Big Nate

In 1989, Peirce created a comic strip named Neighborhood Comix, which revolved a cast of ensemble characters, most of them children. Among the cast was a boy named Nate and his younger brother Marty, who would later serve as the inspiration for the creation of Nate Wright, a future character. An editor of Pierce later sent him a letter, telling him that there were too many characters in Neighborhood Comix, and that he should make one of the characters the protagonist and the focus of the strip. To this, Peirce renamed Marty "Nate", and gave the character Marty's personality. He then changed the strip itself to "Big Nate", based on a nickname he gave his older brother as a kid. Big Nate debuted on newspapers on 1991, and then revolved around the eccentric life of a sixth-grader named Nate Wright, and his family, friends, schoolmates and teachers. Though initially meant to center on Nate's family, the strip eventually began to center on Nate, his friends, classmates, teachers, and middle school P.S. 38. The comic strip has spawned many collections, a musical, and a children's book series.

The book series is written and illustrated by Peirce himself, and published by HarperCollins. They include:

1. In a Class by Himself
2. Strikes Again
3. On a Roll
4. Goes for Broke
5. Flips Out
6. In the Zone
7. Lives it Up

Peirce is currently writing the eighth book of the series, Big Nate Blasts Off.

References

  1. ↑ Peirce, Lincoln (August 27, 2004). "Comics: Meet the Artist". The Washington Post.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lincoln Peirce.