Rupert Kinnard

Rupert Kinnard (born 1954) also credited as Prof. I.B. Gittendowne, is an American cartoonist who created the first ongoing gay/lesbian-identified African-American comic-strip characters: the Brown Bomber (a teenage superhero) and Diva Touché Flambé (his ageless lesbian partner).

In 1972, teenage Kinnard noticed that not only were all of his favorite superheroes white, but even the comics characters he'd created himself didn't reflect his racial identity. He responded by creating Superbad, a Black-militant figure inspired by boxer/activist Muhammad Ali.

In 1976, he enrolled at Cornell College in Iowa. In 1977, he created Brown Bomber, a less aggressive African-American character, modeled after boxer Joe Louis (who was also known by that nickname). After the character became popular on campus, Kinnard wrote a strip which identified the character as gay. After leaving SF Weekly, he became art director of Out/Look, a queer journal.

After moving back to Portland in 1993, he and six other men formed the Portland chapter of Brother to Brother, a social organization for African-American queer men.

Kinnard and Stapley own and operate the Kinley Manor Guest House in Portland. He is working on a graphic memoir, to be called The LifeCapsule Project.

In 2013, he received a "Standing on the Shoulders" Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Arts Foundation, which stated that his "artistic talent and leadership to reach out to the LGBTQ community honors the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."

He was a featured panelist at the first Queers & Comics conference in May 2015, as one of the "Pioneers of Queer Men's Comics" and a speaker on "Queer Comics, Health and Dis/Ability".

In 2019, Kinnard was awarded the Portland Monthly 's Light a Fire Lifetime Achievement Award.

On June 12, 2021, the feature-length documentary film No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics, which featured the works of Kinnard; Alison Bechdel (Fun Home); Jennifer Camper (Rude Girls and Dangerous Women); Howard Cruse (Gay Comix); and Mary Wings (Come Out Comics), premiered at the Tribeca Festival. The film was broadcast on national PBS in 2023.

On August 20, 2021, Kinnard was one of the ribbon cutters during the dedication of Portland's “Never Look Away" mural which celebrates the struggles and accomplishments of the LGBTQ+ community. The block long mural features Kinnard; David Martinez, a founding board member of Portland's Q Center; activist and musician Kathleen Saadat; gay liberation activist Marsha P. Johnson; and transgender rights advocates Angelica Ross and Aydian Dowling.

In 2022, Kinnard was invited to create a show of original artwork in an exhibit entitled "From Cornell to Cathartica: A History of Cathartic Comics" at Cornell College, where he also received the school's highest honor, the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.