All The Answers
by Michael Kupperman
I didn’t know anything about Michael Kupperman. Apparently, he’s a big deal in comics. Shame on me for not knowing that. But, apparently there’s something Kupperman didn’t know about his dad either, and that’s that he was a big deal in the world of Quiz shows. A very big deal. You like my segway? I am.
But no, seriously.
Kupperman’s father never spoke about his childhood because he had a secret. It defined him for many years and he wanted it buried away. He was not just a quizboy in those radio shows (and later, TV) but also kind of THE quiz boy. It’s something that he got thrown into as a kid by his mother and it left him traumatized. And getting to the bottom of why exactly it was such a scarring experience for him is what this book is all about.
In this seriously entertaining and seriously serious book, Kupperman tries to get all the answers, or as many as he can, from his father about these “forgotten” days. He carefully walks us through the process of finding out when he was younger and how his father’s behavior towards him his entire childhood started making sense to him after that. He had to find out more, and he got more than he ever imagined.
All the Answers is truly an engrossing book, from its eerily simplistic art style, to the fascinating history of quiz shows, to his father’s experience through them, to the aftermath which we won’t spoil here. It’s a serious matter, so much so, that the reader often has to do a double take at times and wonder if the lines that read as jokes were truly intended as such. So desperate are we as an audience to laugh in the face of adversity, or is it discomfort?
All the Answers is a triumph in the media of comics. It tells a personal and unique story that at the same time transcends and makes us look inward. I didn’t know anything about Michael Kupperman before, but you bet I’m paying attention now.
