Charles Moss is a writer living in Chattanooga, Tennessee.When he’s not writing press releases and articles for his job, he writes essays about the many aspects of pop culture. He is married to a redhead who looks astonishingly like Mary Jane Watson and has a young son named Noah. Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/chachimoss
Features
Thursday, January 29 2009
What's Going On: Marvin Gaye's Liberation from the Motown Sound
When Obie Benson of the Four Tops brought him a song he had co-written with Al Cleveland, Marvin Gaye found something that had reflected the way he had been feeling ever since Tammi Terrell's death -- anger, sadness, and disillusionment about his friend's death and the chaotic world around him.
Monday, January 5 2009
Will Eisner’s Dual Identity: The Spirit of an Artist
A biography of Will Eisner, perhaps the greatest cartoonist in the history of American comics. Eisner used The Spirit as his vessel for unexplored creativity with story elements not commonly found in comics.
Friday, September 5 2008
What the World Needs Now: Society’s Desperate Need for Superheroes
Hollywood has finally discovered what comic book fans have known all along: superheroes serve as brightly-colored, two-dimensional extensions of ourselves.
Tuesday, July 24 2007
The Transformation of Generation X
The fascination with the shape-shifting toy may have something to do with a metamorphosis this nostalgic cohort wants to forestall -- the change to adulthood.
Reviews
Monday, October 31 2011
How Popular Culture Helps keep us Human in "Key of Z"
In the midst of a zombie apocalypse, or any emergency for that matter, or heck, even life in general, we take comfort in various forms of escapism, our popculture. In the case of the surviving humans in Key of Z, sports and music provide that need.
Thursday, October 20 2011
Hill and Wheeler on Encountering Grandpa
Little Golden Books have been around since 1942. They originally sold for 25 cents and are now considered classic staples of childhood. Grandpa Won't Wake Up is a parody of the Little Golden Books that have filled children’s bookshelves for decades.
Friday, September 30 2011
It's All About Putting on Appearances for 'Superman #1'
It’s ironic that in Superman #1 a main character who, for decades, has struggled with ways to stay relevant and fresh to younger audiences, is the one who resents it the most.
Monday, August 22 2011
When We Knew the Apes Would Rise
Jane Goodall at her most frightening writes, "During the first ten years of the study I had believed […] that the Gombe chimpanzees were, for the most part, rather nicer than human beings. […] Then suddenly we found that chimpanzees could be brutal -- that they, like us, had a darker side to their nature."
Monday, August 8 2011
The Death and More Still of the Malignant Man
At its heart, Malignant Man is not a horror comic. Nor does it try to be. It’s a dark thriller that combines action, suspense and a bit of fun into a tale that ends up reminding as a combination of The Matrix and Alien. But…
