Cartooning from the Margins: Digital Exhibits on Newspaper Cartoonists

Justin Wigard — “Rupert Kinnard”

SAMPLE Cartoonist Profile: Rupert Kinnard and Ray Billingsley (this is in Heading 1)

Born on July 21, 1954, Rupert Kinnard is a gay African-American cartoonist primarily known for the creation of Cathartic Comics, a syndicated cartoon strip that holds the distinction of featuring the first out, ongoing LGBTQ+ Black comic strip characters: The Brown Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé.

Image 1: Rupert Kinnard smiles at the camera in front of original art for his comic strip, Catharsis Comics. Rupert is Black and nearly bald; he is wearing a turtleneck and holding up a flyer or book partially obscured by the photographic crop.
Image 1: Rupert Kinnard smiles at the camera in front of original art for his comic strip, Catharsis Comics.

Comic Strip Profile: Catharsis Comics

Image 2: standard four-panel strip for Rupert Kinnard’s Catharsis Comics, which features both the Brown Bomber and Diva.

Wikidata Profile: Rupert Kinnard

Kinnard’s Wikidata Item is contains a lot of expected biological and biographical information present: his occupation, date of birth, biological sex/gender, etc. Hi occupation as both a cartoonist and a comics artist is listed, which will be helpful when working on visualizing those particular professional roles. However, what’s missing are specifics about Kinnard’s comic strips, as well as his professional connections to newspaper syndicates in the Midwest and on the west coast, which is where he came to prominence. These would be the two primary statements or qualifiers I would update:

  • Professional information beyond his academic education at Cornell and the American Academy of Art College
  • Publishing information for Kinnard’s comic strip and characters
    • This also means that I would need to actually create items for Kinnard’s comic strip, Cathartic Comics, and the characters The Brown Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé

Also, what’s missing is any kind of photograph for Kinnard, as well as his identity as a person with a disability (which he suffered from a car accident in the late 1990s). These are necessary to think through primarily due to Kinnard’s identity as a Black, queer, and disabled cartoonist working in a predominately white industry: being able to actually *see* Kinnard’s photograph and the portraits of other cartoonists of color in Wikidata visualizations or queries ultimately increases the visibility of these creators and their contributions.

 

Wikidata link for Rupert Kinnard.

 

 

TimelineJS: Ray Billingsley

[timeline src=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1br_v1hrrEyqb4j0G8HVM_cpA-rZM6P6oPSIGoRlyM_Q/edit#gid=0″ width=”100%” height=”650″ font=”Default” lang=”en” version=”timeline3″ ]