Goodbye, Alice Otterloop, and hello, Big Nate.
With Richard Thompson ending his award-winning "Cul de Sac" comic strip today, the Star-Advertiser had to find a worthy replacement to run in its place — and what better than one whose creator was part of a small group of cartoonists who helped Thompson carry on his work while he underwent treatment for Parkinson’s disease this year?
It’s a Hawaii homecoming for "Big Nate," by Lincoln Peirce (pronounced "purse"), as the strip appeared in the Sunday funnies in the old Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Like Thompson’s Alice Otterloop, Peirce’s energetic sixth-grader Big Nate is filled with big ideas, with a rather naive but enthusiastic sense of his own importance.
Writing in an email from his home in Portland, Maine, Peirce said he is happy that Star-Advertiser readers will be able to enjoy the comic strip seven days a week, starting Monday, in the Today section.
"I think your readers will find that they’ll learn a great deal more about all the characters in ‘Big Nate’ by following the strip on a daily basis," he said. "Sunday strips are generally stand-alone gags, whereas the Monday-through-Saturday dailies really provide the foundation on which a strip is built."
Since its last appearance in Hawaii, a couple of supporting characters have come to play larger roles in the comic strip, namely Gina, the protagonist’s overachieving arch rival, and Chad, a sweet and naive little guy who has become a de facto mascot for Nate’s group of friends.
"I tend to organize story lines in one- or two-week arcs, and in the upcoming weeks, readers can expect to see strips about Nate’s obsession with his horoscope, a chess ‘grudge match’ between Nate and Gina, and an epic soccer story in which Nate’s school takes on another school that hasn’t won a game in five years," Peirce wrote.
"Big Nate" has been described by Kirkus Reviews as "a latter-day ‘Peanuts’ and a kinder, gentler ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid.’"
While Peirce is flattered to be mentioned in the same breath as the Charles M. Schulz classic, which he called "the best comic strip ever," he said the latter is probably a more apt comparison "because both Nate and Greg Heffley, the star of the ‘Wimpy Kid’ books, are middle school kids, and that’s a world that’s very specific. There’s nothing quite like middle school, where you experience soaring triumphs and crushing humiliations on an almost daily basis."
Peirce said that when he started the comic strip more than 20 years ago, he thought it would focus mostly on Nate’s home life with his single dad and older sister. "But almost immediately, I realized that the storylines I enjoyed the most took place in school. I’m a former school teacher, so I guess that’s no surprise," he explained.
"Anyway, from September to June, the strips focus almost exclusively on school themes, whether inside the classroom, on the athletic field, or on a field trip. During the summer months, there might be stories in which Nate takes a short trip or something like that, but he never wanders too far afield — maybe to the local beach or to a summer camp, but nothing real exotic."
Besides working under the usual deadlines of writing and drawing a daily strip, Peirce has branched out to illustrated "Big Nate" novels.
"It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to call them graphic novels. The term that’s getting used recently is ‘hybrid’ books. They’re kids’ books that combine text and comics, created specifically for the novels and not made up of previously published strips."
His fifth book, "Big Nate Flips Out," is due for release in February.
"I like the fact that it’s a different kind of writing from what I do in the strip on a daily basis and I enjoy having the space on the page to create artwork that’s more detailed and multidimensional. I also welcome the chance to go on book tours and meet the kids who are buying and reading these novels.
"Over the years, ‘Big Nate’ has become known in the industry as a ‘kids’ strip,’ even though I don’t write it specifically for kids. I write it for readers of all ages. But, probably in part because of the books, a lot of kids who don’t read newspaper comics have discovered ‘Big Nate’ in the last two or three years. So I’d say the primary audience for the books are kids age 7 to 11."
Before "Big Nate" joins the Star-Advertiser’s ohana of comic strips, Peirce wanted to first pay tribute to the departing "Cul de Sac" and its creator.
"As soon as I saw ‘Cul de Sac,’ I became a huge fan," he said. "I’d seen and admired Richard’s prior illustration work, his editorial stuff, and so on, but I thought ‘Cul de Sac’ was the perfect marriage of art, story, and character. I think it’s the best comic strip since ‘Peanuts’ and I felt honored and humbled to be asked to help him.
"I don’t think anyone out there could fill Richard’s shoes. I’m sure readers will miss ‘Cul de Sac’ desperately, as will I. But I think they’ll find that there’s a lot to like about ‘Big Nate’ and that some of Richard’s observations about the perplexities of childhood mirror my own."
