What Happens when a Child Media Celebrity doesn't want to be famous ? Kupperman's new graphic novel is a serious look at his father's years as
a childhood star of Old Time Radio's The Quiz Kids. The weekly Chicago based radio and TV program was hugely successful in the war years and early 1950s.
Joel Kupperman joined the show as a math prodigy at age 6 but never enjoyed the fame game. It so embittered him, that he dropped Math as a pursuit and refused to talk about his 9 years of fame. As described in the amazon entry
"In this moving graphic memoir, Eisner Award-winning writer and artist
Michael Kupperman traces the life of his reclusive father—the
once-world-famous Joel Kupperman, Quiz Kid. That his father is slipping
into dementia—seems to embrace it, really—means that the past he would
never talk about might be erased forever...With wit and heart, Michael Kupperman presents a fascinating account of
mid-century radio and early television history, the pro-Jewish
propaganda entertainment used to counteract anti-Semitism, and the early
age of modern celebrity culture."
