Drawing diversity

The year 1979 was important in the history of the civil rights and gay rights movements in the United States.

It was the year that the White Night riots took place in the streets of San Francisco after a jury found Dan White, who assassinated LGBT icon Harvey Milk, guilty of manslaughter. It was also the year of the Greensboro massacre, in which a group of five people were killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan during an anti-Klan rally, and each defendant was acquitted by an all-white jury.

Toward the end of 1979, graphic artist Rupert Kinnard had just arrived in the Rose City from the Midwest.

Kinnard will be giving a lecture at Portland State Tuesday, Nov. 15, about his body of work. The event is the latest installment of the Black Bag Speaker series, organized by department of black studies professor Ethan Johnson.

The series received a diversity grant six years ago, and the black studies department holds three to four “Black Bag” events a year. The topics usually have to do with diversity, race or social issues and feature African American speakers.

When Kinnard moved to Portland, he witnessed a political and social climate of tolerance and diversity, one far different from what he saw back in Iowa.

By that time, Kinnard was already a published artist, having created the first gay African-American superhero character called the Brown Bomber in 1977.

The Brown Bomber—as he appears in B.B. and the Diva, a comic strip that ran in such alternative publications as Just Out, SF Weekly and OUTlines Magazine—has an alter ego named Eric Bomber, a perpetual 19-year-old who’s part hero, part mystical fairy. Eric turns into a superhero simply by hiccupping.

For the 57-year-old Kinnard, the creation of the Brown Bomber signaled a shift in his maturity and ideology. His earlier overzealous understanding of the African American identity was replaced by a more composed and pragmatic appreciation of the dynamic of race relations in the country at the time.

Kinnard was a fan of both DC and Marvel comics, and many of the publishing companies most famous superheroes—such as Batman and Spiderman, respectively—resonated loudly with the budding artist.

Prior to the Brown Bomber, he created Super Bad, a character that he hoped would fill in the missing narrative of the black superhero in popular comics.

“Super Bad only fights against white people because I was angry about the way I saw black people being treated while I was in high school,” Kinnard said.

When the Brown Bomber was born, Kinnard had retired most of the “extreme, militant part” of himself.

“I felt that there were tons of observations to be made about society at large through the eyes of an African gay male perspective,” Kinnard said. “The character is a celebration of the unique culture of those African American gay men.”

Among the issues B.B. deals with are racism and sexism. Overcoming adversities unique to one’s identity is a theme throughout the comic. For example, Kinnard said the Brown Bomber would fight against a conservative candidate running for office who seeks to take away the rights of gay men.

Oftentimes, the superhero deals with everyday injustices that urbanites face. In one strip, the Brown Bomber can be seen cutting a car in half because it was parked in a designated handicapped space. In another, he removes the mouth of a theater patron who talks too loudly.

The result is amusing and satisfying for readers, who can easily identify with the Brown Bomber’s problems.

Speaking from personal experience, Kinnard said that it is more difficult being black in a gay community than it is being gay in a black community.

“Racism in the gay community is rampant. I had a lifetime of being confronted with that,” Kinnard said. “And to make my situation even more complicated, I’m confined to a wheelchair.”

Fifteen years ago, Kinnard was in an automobile accident that left him with a spinal cord injury. The experience adds yet another layer of complexity to Kinnard’s identity.

The artist is currently living with his partner of 21 years, Scott Stapley, and has his own design firm. Kinnard is also busying himself with LifeCapsule, a memoir about his life in graphic novel form. The project includes all of his published works and is divided into chapters, from his younger years in Chicago’s South Side to his home in Portland.

Since Kinnard belongs to a handful of different communities, one of the goals of the LifeCapsule project is to showcase the intersections of these communities in his own life.