Lincoln Peirce

Lincoln Peirce (pronounced "Purse") is a cartoonist, best known for creating Big Nate. He is also the author of Max and The Midknights.

Lincoln's early life
Lincoln was born on October 23, 1963, in Ames, Iowa, but grew up in Durham, New Hampshire. He grew an interest in comic strips at the age of around 7 or 8 years, where he read stuff like Peanuts and Doonesbury, and created his first comic strip ever in 4th grade, Super Jimmy. The strip was about a clumsy superhero, who was also a bucktoothed kid, just trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find an image for Super Jimmy, but if you can, it would be greatly appreciated.

In 5th grade he made a comic called ”Dr. Cesspool.” He would later use it again in Big Nate. He notes in many interviews that the reason why Big Nate is centered on Middle School is because he has many memories of middle school.

He attended Oyster River High School, where he made comic strips that savaged the teachers he didn't really care about, and graduated to Colby College in Maine, where he studied art. During his time at college, he created a comic strip for the school newspaper, called "Third Floor." It was basically a Doonesbury ripoff. He later earned a graduate degree from Brooklyn College and also studied at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. For 3 years, he coached baseball and taught art at Xavier High School before moving to Maine and started becoming a cartoonist.

Career
Lincoln started submitting a bunch of strips to major newspaper syndicates, almost all of them getting the same results: they were rejected, some of which include Outerbridge, Coach, East Side Zoo, Goode Enough, and Kensington Arms

. He also created a local radio station on WMPG due to his love for country music.

He even created several animated shorts for both Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, and came up with a show called Spang Ho! He submitted a pilot episode to Cartoon Network, but it was unfortunately rejected. However, you can still view the pilot episode on Vimeo and a show called Uncle Gus in Cartoon Network too but also got rejected because it lost to Billy and Mandy from a show called Cartoon Cartoon Fridays Big Pick.

The two pilots remain lost media. Nowadays, he's either creating a Big Nate comic strip, or going to a school to give a presentation on cartooning.

Big Nate, and the comic.
One of the comic strip ideas that Lincoln sent to a major newspaper (in this case, United Media) was called Neighborhood Comix, a strip based off of his childhood in New Hampshire, with the characters loosely based off of his friends. The 2 main characters were Nate and Marty, who are also characters in Big Nate. However, instead of being son and father respectively, they were actually brothers, with Marty's personality being more similar to Nate's personality in Neighborhood Comix. While United Media liked the idea, they thought that Nate resembled Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes a bit too much, so Lincoln decided to merge Nate and Marty into one: He kept Nate's name and overall appearance while tweaking it a bit (like changing his hair into spiky hair) and Marty's personality.

When he was a child, he often called his brother Jon "Big Nate", so he used this nickname as the name for his new comic strip to solidify Nate being the main character for this strip. After about a year and a half of blood, sweat, and tears, he finally released his first comic strip on January 7, 1991.

Many years later, he created his first Big Nate novel, Big Nate: In a Class by Himself, in partnership with Jeff Kinney, also known author of the Diary of a Wimpy kid series. He created several more Big Nate novels before ending it at Big Nate: Blasts Off, on February 16, 2016.

List of Big Nate books
Here are a list of Big Nate collections and when they were released (either published by Andrew McMeel publishing or HarperCollins): Here is a list of all the Big Nate novels: And here is a list of all the Big Nate activity books:
 * Add More Babes!: Awesome Big Nate Comics- January 7, 1992
 * Big Nate: Dibs on this Chair- 2001
 * Big Nate: Pray for a Fire Drill- 2001
 * Big Nate: Makes a SplFlowey- 2001
 * I Smell a Pop Quiz!: A Big Nate Book- June 7, 2008
 * Big Nate: From the Top- October 19, 2010
 * Big Nate: Out Loud- April 26, 2011
 * Big Nate And Friends- December 6, 2011
 * Big Nate: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?- May 8, 2012
 * Big Nate: Here Goes Nothing- August 21, 2012
 * Big Nate Makes the Grade- August 21, 2012
 * Big Nate: All Work and No Play (A Collection of Big Nate Sundays)- October 16, 2012
 * Big Nate: Game On!-  April 2, 2013
 * Big Nate: Genius Mode- May 7, 2013
 * Big Nate: I Can't Take It!- October 15, 2013
 * Big Nate: Great Minds Think Alike- April fools day
 * Big Nate: Mr. Popularity- May 6, 2014
 * Big Nate: The Crowd Goes Wild- October 14, 2014
 * Big Nate: Greatest Hits (Pray for a Fire Drill, Dibs on the Chair, and Makes a SplFlowey)- January 7, 2015
 * Big Nate: Say Good-Bye To Dork City- March 17, 2015
 * Big Nate: Welcome To My World- September 22, 2015
 * Big Nate: Thunka, Thunka, Thunka- March 1, 2016
 * Big Nate: Revenge of the Cream Puffs- September 6, 2016
 * The Epic Big Nate- October 25, 2016
 * Big Nate: What's a Little Noogie Between Friends?- February 28, 2017
 * Big Nate: A Good Old FFloweyioned Wedgie- August 29, 2017
 * Big Nate: Silent But Deadly (2018)
 * Big Nate Goes Bananas! (2018)
 * Big Nate: Payback Time! (2019)
 * Big Nate: Hug It Out! - September 3rd, 2019
 * Big Nate: Blow the Roof Off! - March 3rd, 2020
 * Big Nate: Stays Classy! - June 2nd, 2020
 * Big Nate: The Gerbil Ate My Homework (2020)
 * Big Nate: In Your Face! (2021)
 * Big Nate: Aloha (2021)
 * Big Nate: Beware of Low-Flying Corn Muffins (2022)
 * Big Nate: Release the Hounds (2022)
 * Big Nate: Nailed It! (2023)
 * Big Nate: Move it or Lose it (2023)
 * Big Nate: This Means War! (2024)
 * 1) Big Nate: In a Class by Himself- March 23, 2010
 * 2) Big Nate Strikes Again- October 19, 2010
 * 3) Big Nate: On a Roll- August 16, 2011 
 * 4) Big Nate Goes for Broke-  March 20, 2012
 * 5) Big Nate Flips out- February 5, 2013
 * 6) Big Nate: In the zone- March 11, 2014
 * 7) Big Nate Lives it up- March 10, 2015
 * 8) Big Nate: Blasts Off- February 16, 2016
 * 1) Big Nate Boredom Buster: Super Scribbles, Cool Comix, and Lots of Laughs- April 12, 2011
 * 2) Big Nate Fun Blaster: Cheezy Doodles, Crazy Comix and Loads of Laughs- July 10, 2012
 * 3) Big Nate Doodlepalooza: Scribble Games, Secret Codes, and Nonstop Laughs- July 9, 2013
 * 4) Big Nate Laugh-O-Rama: Daring Drawings, Maze Madness, and Tons of Fun- July 9, 2014
 * 5) Big Nate Super Scribbler: Cheezy Doodles, Crazy Comix, and Epic Laughs- July 7, 2015
 * 6) Big Nate Puzzlemania: Super Scribbles, Goofy Games, and Tons of Fun- May 19, 2016

GoComics
Since the Big Nate strips are distributed by Andrew McMeel publishing, all the Big Nate strips can be viewed on a website called GoComics. Lincoln also has his own account on there, named "bignate", and he's a Creator. He has followed almost every single comic on GoComics, including his own, and once threatened to remove the comment section from Big Nate entirely due to all the rude comments during the poll war.

He left the comment section, but returned on September 26, 2023

His most recent comment occurred on December 25, 2023.

Personal life
Lincoln lives in Portland, Maine, with his wife and 2 children.

Trivia

 * When people try to type his name, the spellcheck translates it into ¨Pierce¨ rather than ¨Peirce¨
 * He uses a small book to draw ideas for new strips.
 * The ¨Nate hitting himself with a plastic bottle idea¨ actually originated from him! He said it was a good stress reliever.
 * In fact, most of the things that were from the comic were just Mr. Peirce´s HUGE imagination or something that happened from his childhood.
 * Lincoln's current favorite strip is September 15, 2007.
 * Lincoln hates and is scared of all the things Nate is scared of and the things he hates and likes too, such as egg salad and cats.
 * In middle school, Lincoln also drew Doctor Cesspool.
 * His name is pronounced "Purse"
 * His favorite comic is Monty by Jim Meddick.