Hang onto your hat: There's going to be a change in the Star Tribune's daily comics.
Jan Eliot, creator of the comic strip "Stone Soup," is going into "semi-retirement," which means she's retiring her weekday version of the blended-family strip. It'll continue to run on Sundays. But starting Monday, Stone's popular, long-running strip will be replaced by another popular, long-running strip, "Big Nate."
You might know Nate Wright. The sixth-grader already is the star of 10 graphic novels and a series of bestselling books. If you've never heard of him, here's the skinny: He's 11 years old, 4½ feet tall and the all-time record holder for detentions in school history.
Lincoln Peirce, who just happened to start drawing cartoons when he was in sixth grade, introduces us to the hockey-loving, cat-hating main character of his strip.
Q: Describe Nate for us.
A: Big Nate isn't known for his scholarly-ness, but I like to think he walks the fine line between being an underachiever and being very positive. He has a lot of confidence and can be self-absorbed, but that's because he's young. Even when he misbehaves, you understand that he's not a bad kid. He's endearing. It's clear he has a good heart.
Q: So he's kind of a normal kid?
A: He's authentic. That's why kids — and adults — respond to him. I didn't want to have kids that were like little adults. That's been done before, and to perfection, in "Peanuts," in "Calvin and Hobbes." My bottom line is making him act like a real kid. That makes him sarcastic at times, that makes him say dumb things at times.
