You’ve probably seen Rupert Kinnard’s smile if you’ve passed the downtown Portland mural on NW Couch at Broadway. A wheelchair user since a car accident in 1996, Kinnard sits between Kathleen Saadat and Lynn Nakamoto, two other icons of Portland’s queer history. Look closer, to the bottom of the mural, and you’ll see two smaller figures who look like they might’ve just beamed in from Saturn—the Brown Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé, the two stars of Kinnard’s Cathartic Comics. 

Gay, Black, and proud of it, the Brown Bomber and the Diva helmed Kinnard’s comic that ran for about a decade in the pages of alt weeklies and queer newspapers in the ’80s and ’90s. Like the protagonists of contemporary comics Doonesbury and Dykes to Watch Out For (and later The Boondocks), the Brown Bomber and the Diva called out Republican hypocrites, celebrity foibles, and yuppies, but Cathartic Comics came from a uniquely Black, gay, and intersectional perspective. 

Kinnard grew up in Chicago, drawing constantly and reading superhero comics. Eventually, he started questioning why comic book characters were all white, so he started drawing his own, including one styled after Muhammad Ali. Black, powerful, and not afraid to call himself pretty—Ali was a real-life superhero to Kinnard.

One of the characters he created he dubbed “the Brown Bomber” (after another boxing icon, Joe Louis). Kinnard never expected the Brown Bomber to appear anywhere other than his sketchbook until the editor of his college newspaper asked him to contribute comics weekly. Kinnard used the Brown Bomber to editorialize on student issues du jour (or just poke fun at freshmen). The school paper was where he began to craft his social commentary cartooning. In his senior year, Kinnard staged a three-week series that culminated with the Bomber coming out as gay.

After college, Kinnard moved to Portland—bigger than his Iowa college town, but not as overwhelming as Chicago. But it wasn’t just the size that convinced him to stay. “Arriving in Portland in the late ’70s, there was just something about the energy of the communities here—the African American community, the queer movement, the formation of the first Pride Parade—that just attracted me. I wanted to be a part of as much as I could,” he says from his home in Northeast.

A graphic designer, he helped start Just Out, and within a year, the Brown Bomber made his Portland debut in its pages. This time, he had a sidekick—Diva Touché Flambé. Like the Brown Bomber, she was unapologetically Black and gay. But where the Brown Bomber was wide-eyed and naive, she was wizened to the world and wore a look of “perpetual nonchalance.” 

Together, Cathartic Comics’ two outspoken queer protagonists didn’t just offer wry commentary on the latest gay trend (referring to oneself as “straight-acting” in dating ads), they commented on local scuttlebutt, exorbitant AIDS drug costs, and Spike Lee Oscar snubs alike. They pilloried  straight-people shenanigans and racism in the gay community alike. But the comic still came from a place of love; the creator deeply cared about his characters (including Vanilla Cremepuff, the gay white male proxy), and the strip carried an ever-present sense of playfulness.   

If any of this sounds familiar, you might have seen Kinnard in the 2021 documentary No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics, which featured Kinnard alongside his peers Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, and Jennifer Camper. Cathartic Comics was also displayed at the Portland Art Museum’s Black Artists of Oregon 2023 exhibit, which featured his original drawings and the 1992 collection B.B. and the Diva under glass. 

For decades, this slim volume—long out of print—was the only collection of Cathartic Comics. Unlike the work of other local comics legends, readers couldn’t check Kinnard’s work out from the library or find it easily at Powell’s. 

Now, almost half a century since the Brown Bomber debuted in Kinnard’s college paper, a hefty new book from Stacked Deck Press is changing that. Ooops … I Catharted: Fifty Years of Cathartic Comics isn’t just a sizable collection of strips, but an archive of Kinnard’s journey as an activist and artist. 

“It’s dense, you know. It’s not just a simple collection of comic strips,” says Kinnard. “[But I’m thrilled] to have the opportunity to present not only all of those comics, but the story of the comics. The reaction to the book has been incredibly rewarding. I think they delight in the history, almost folklore, of the comics.” 

In addition to a robust collection of Cathartic strips, the book contains photos, early drawings, and the story of Kinnard’s journey from Midwest to West Coast, with annotated strips, character lore, and small bits of trivia. For example, a 25-year-old Colman Domingo played the Brown Bomber in a 1994 San Francisco stage play called Out of the Inkwell.

“The book is more than an archival collection of comics, which would’ve been impressive on its own,” says Jason Levian of Floating World Comics, where Kinnard will be hosting a reading Saturday, June 21. “It includes a complete biography, with photos and artifacts, that tells Rupert’s life story and places his impressive career into a historical context.”

Ooops… I Just Catharted! also reprints the forward from the ’92 book, written by filmmaker Marlon Riggs, who died tragically young from AIDS in 1996. Like Kinnard, Riggs was unapologetically himself and used art to share what it meant to be a Black gay man living in the Reagan era. Through Kinnard, he found a kindred spirit and friend, and in Cathartic Comics he found “a comic strip I could identify with and laugh about—a rare, affirming laughter.” 

It’s also a book of Portland lore. Besides Just Out, Kinnard worked as a graphic designer at The Skanner and Willamette Week, a freelancer for other progressive and grassroots organizations, and a board member of the Portland Town Council, the city’s first gay rights coalition. 

Kinnard and Cathartic Comics spent seven years in the Bay Area before moving back to Portland in the mid-’90s, where he resumed his graphic design and community work. He helped found and run Brother to Brother Portland, a kinship group for African American gay and bi men, and was a plaintiff with his partner, Scott, in Basic Rights Oregon’s challenge to Measure 36, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

Some of Kinnard’s current inspirations are other young cartoonists of color, who are thrilled to learn about the Brown Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé but also feel robbed that they are learning about Kinnard’s creations so late. Ooops… I Just Catharted! finally offers a way for readers in and outside of Portland to make up for lost time. 

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Rupert Kinnard will speak about his work at the Ooops…I Just Catharted!: 50 Years of Cathartic Comics book release at Floating World Comics, 1223 Lloyd Center,  Sat June 21, 5-7 pm, FREE, all ages