User blog:ComicRater/Big Nate Year in Review: 2019

Big Nate Year in review: 2019

Hey guys, Rater here. So, as 2019 came to an end, we saw the conclusion of Big Nate in 2019. In this page, I will be reviewing this year of what went wrong and what went good. I will also do a final conclusion at the end of what I think of it all.

This is my opinion, so please respect it. And know, I can be a little negative. But, I still love Big Nate even though I point out some flaws of it.

Now, let’s begin!

If you’re just here for the opinion, than, I think this year was a mess. It was a lot of overused and wasted potential, and it really disappointed me. Now let’s go into it more.

What was good
First, to try to keep things positive, I’ll review the good stuff.
 * 1) The drawings were good

Besides some lazy ones here and there, the drawings were good. The colors were vibrant. There was different contrast. It looked good, while not making things too realistic. The only thing was that Nate’s head was too big, and Nate and his friends were a little tall. But otherwise, they had good drawings. After we got the mess of the bad Chad arc, the arcs went from bad to mediocre. They weren’t as bad as they used to be. None were astounding, but they weren’t that bad. We actually got a decent one at the end of the year (The A Christmas Carol Arc) which had its flaws but was decent in general.
 * 1) The arcs sorta improved in the end of the year
 * 1) The Sunday strips were good (at the beginning of the year)

At the first 6 months or so of the year, the Sunday’s were decent. We had some bad ones here and there, but it was still fine.

What was bad
A lot of this I have mentioned in the “What Happened to Big Nate?” article, so I might be repeating myself a bit. But I wrote that in September, so some other things have changed. NEGATIVE OPINION INCOMING. I’ll go from most major to least major. In my opinion, this was the biggest problem of the year. Almost all the endings this year were bad. They were bad because they usually ruined the point of the arc, made the arc seem stupid or pointless, or just tortured Nate. This happened so much this year, that other commenters were noticing too. And the bad endings have also ruined a possible good arc. For example, we had an arc this year where we had Artur having a crush on Dee Dee. The arc was actually good, but the ending ruined it. It basically kept Artur in an unhealthy relationship. Jenny found out artur had a crush on Dee Dee, and she was furious. The ending just said “Oh, I’ll just apologize to Jenny forever.” Why is that a good ending? They are still together even though Artur had feelings for another girl, and it’s not healthy for him to say he will apologize forever. This was the biggest problem because it happened throughout the entire year. I don’t know if it’s just because he can only make an arc a week, but it’s still annoying. Another big problem is because there as repeated concepts. Big Nate wasn’t trying anything new. A lot of the arcs were the same thing we have seen before, just with different words. It wasn’t the biggest problem because it happened more in the beginning of the year than the end of the year. But still, it was very annoying. I don’t have much to say about this, because I basically just said what I needed to. It’s a huge problem.
 * 1) Bad Endings / Wasted Potential
 * 1) Overused/Repeated Concepts
 * 1) Stretched thin arcs

Another huge problem is the arc lengths. This happened so many times this year that I lost count. What would really happen is that an arc that didn’t have to last long gets stretched to unnecessary lengths. I get it, Peirce. You are running out of ideas, and need to make arcs last longer. But making a 1 week (maybe 2) week arc almost a month is really stupid. I don’t really have to give an example, because you probably get the point, but if you don’t, read the Gina Bet / Sherman arc this year (Mrs Godfrey takes a frickin week to tell Gina she is in trouble).
 * 1) Ruined characters

This happened most at the end of the year, but happened sometimes in the beginning of the year too. In this year, we lost many characters, such as Chad, Francis, Pickles (lol), and more. I’m not going to go into full detail about why the characters are ruined. But basically, this year made a lot of the characters seem really mean, dumb, or stupid for no reason. This didn’t happen too often, but it still happened throughout the year. Nate was even ruined a bit too, but I’m not gonna talk about that.


 * 1) Slapstick Comedy

This was a problem we faced mostly in the beginning of the year, but still happened throughout the year. Nate was constantly being tortured psychically and emotionally. Although he sometimes deserved it, he didn’t always, and the Nate chew toy arcs got really repetitive and bad at times. Luckily, this cooled down as the year went on.
 * 1) Overused characters

This happened more in the end of the year. We would see the same characters appearing over and over again *Chad* but never see any new ones or old ones. Why can’t we introduce a new character? Why can’t we have good underrated characters, like Gordie? Or Ellen? Maybe even Derek from chess camp... Having random, never before seen characters is one thing, but building new, fun characters in another. Although this didn’t happen throughout the whole year, it was still a problem.


 * 1) Bad Sunday Strips (in the second half of the year)

I liked the Sunday’s (mostly) through to July. But they started to get worse after that. Almost all of them after that we’re boring, overused, or unfunny material, in my arrogant opinion. I don’t know what happened really, but once August came around, they just got so much worse. Also, (unpopular opinion) I don’t like Nate’s Comics, I hope they don’t return.
 * 1) Random pop culture references

This is more of a nitpick, but I wanna say it anyways. Big Nate throughout the year just used  random in real life references for no reason. This is not only weird, but it confused many of the users at times. We even got part of an arc that was just Nate comparing holidays to pop stars, which I (and many others) didn’t get at all. I thought this was a cartoon world?

Ok, I’m done with that. Sorry if I was being nit picky. But after all, my name is ComicRater!

Conclusion + Final Rating
Here, I will get all the factors of this year, and give them an A-F scale, with + or -. Here’s how I define each letter.

A = Awesome

B = Good / Fine

C = Meh

D = Bad

F = Terrible

Now, for the rating.

Daily Arcs: D

Sunday Strips: B / C

Drawings: A

Characters: D

Final Letter Rating: D

Final Number Rating: 3/10

So that’s it! Hope you enjoyed this page, it took stupidly long to write. But hey, I have nothing to do with my life anyways! Bye!

-Rater