Free Toon Talk w/ Rupert Kinnard: 50 Years of Comics (SF)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Join us for a lively Toon Talk with Rupert Kinnard about his long-running comic strip, Cathartic Comics, from the 1970s through the 1990s. Cathartic Comics included the Brown Bomber, comics’ first black and gay superhero, and Diva Touché Flambé, master of the ancient practice of Slapthology. Ooops…I Just Catharted! is the most comprehensive collection to date of Kinnard’s work, but it’s also a personal and creative biography of the man who held the pen. Kinnard will also be presenting at the SF Public Library’s Pride in Panels events on Sunday, February 15th. 

About Ooops… I Just Catharted: 50 Years of Cathartic Comics

Ooops…I Just Catharted!: 50 Years of Cathartic Comics is a collection of Rupert Kinnard’s long-running comic strip, Cathartic Comics. From the 1970s through the 1990s, Cathartic Comics made its way from The Cornellian, the student newspaper of Cornell College, to the queer-focused alternative weekly newspapers that popped up in communities across the country. Along the way, readers delighted in the exploits of the Brown Bomber, comics’ first black and gay superhero, and Diva Touché Flambé, master of the ancient practice of Slapthology. These two satirized the political and social mores of the age, touching not only upon the divide between liberal and conservative or gay and  straight, but also between Black and white in the queer community and beyond.

This deluxe hardcover also includes early artwork and extensive personal commentary by the artist. Foreword by Lawrence Lindell. Introduction by Marlon T. Riggs.

About Rupert Kinnard

Rupert Kinnard is an award-winning African American, gay, paraplegic artist and activist, and is the creator of the political comic strip Cathartic Comics and the book B.B. and the Diva: A Collection of Cathartic Comics featuring The Brown Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé, published in 1992 by Alyson Publications. His recent book, Ooops…I Just Catharted! Fifty Years of Cathartic Comics was published by Stacked Deck Press in 2025. 

Kinnard turned his youthful love of superhero comics into a way to hold a mirror up to the world. He and his work have been featured in numerous places along the way, including the documentary No Straight Lines, chronicling the history of queer comics, and the recent comics anthology We Belong, celebrating queer Black voices. Kinnard has served as a keynote speaker at the Comics and Medicine Conference in Seattle and at the Comics Studies Society Conference at the University of Northern Texas. He has been a presenter at the Queers and Comics conferences in New York and San Francisco. His Cathartic Comics were featured in the Black Artists of Oregon exhibit at the Portland Art Museum and he has original artwork included in the archives at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum, and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum in Columbus, OH.

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