The Forward: When Even A Boy Einstein Doesn’t Have ‘All The Answers’

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Michael Kupperman grew up in Connecticut, hidden away in suburbia along with a family secret; Kupperman’s professor father, Joel Kupperman, had been a child star, one of the most popular and recognized child stars of his generation.

As the “genius” boy Einstein of the largely rigged show “Quiz Kids,” Joel Kupperman had been cast as exemplar to a less objectionable popularization of the Jewish people. His son, who characterizes his own childhood as isolated and singular, came of age in a manner nothing like that of his doted-on father, and his career could be best categorized as “graphic novelist,” a profession undreamable to the psyche of 1940s and ’50s network television, and a profession that promises, to the most successful practitioners of the oeuvre, near-anonymity. Even as a “graphic novelist,” Michael Kupperman’s published work has tended toward outliers; until now, Kupperman has been more concerned with off-kilter humor and parody than with narrative. ...

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