I am completely unfamiliar with Lincoln Pierce's Big Nate, owing mostly to the fact that it is a newspaper strip that is not rooted in complete and utter soul-crushing despair, but the one thing I know about it is that it lives up to its name. It is certainly a big comic. So big, in fact, that this month, it broke the world record for "Longest Cartoon Strip Created By A Team" with a group effort spearheaded by pierce and chronicled on The Today Show in front of a smiling, benevolent Al Roker.

The strip, recreated from Pierce's artwork by volunteers from schools across the world, clocks in at 3,923 feet and two inches, officially netting the world record and dethroning the previous record set by French schoolchildren in 2000. So suck on that, French children! USA! USA! USA!

 

Big Nate creator Lincoln Pierce receives the Guinness Record
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The strip, which follows the adventures of an 11 year-old and which was created by a man who is super into Cheetos, was laid out at New York City's 30 Rockefeller Center, covering the ice skating rink and a good portion of the surrounding streets for the official presentation on The Today Show. Young fans in various countries were encouraged to project individual panels from Pierce's newspaper strip onto posterboard and then send them to Pierce for the full, completed strip, though one assumes that there weren't a lot of takers in France.

As for why Guinness refers to this as a "cartoon strip" and not a "comic strip," well, your guess is as good as mine, but I'm guessing it has a lot to do with the folks at Guinness coming up with these categories while imbibing a little too much of their own namesake product. For more information, check out the official Big Nate website.

 

 

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