These mutants are the two characters of Americans, the Jekyll and Hyde faces of our foriegn policy. In the larger illustration, we see a US officer ordering his company to pacify the civilians. This could be Lt. Calley in Vietnam “destroying the village to save it,” or perhaps a scene from Fallujah in the present War Against Iraq.

Yet, in the inset, we see a sincere effort by American representatives to bring the benefits of modernization to a “backwards” people! This could be a Peace Corp volunteer showing these technologicallly ignorant folks how to purify their drinking water.

Could these mutants be an unintentional self portrait, an illustration of how thoughtful Americans secretly saw themselves back in 1954? Or perhaps it was an intentional satirical jab on the part of the artist?

-dwvr

1953 paranioa led to Mechanix Illustrated releasing this article. The imagery is awesome!

Lois Lane has a mutant head just like in this article! Way cool! :-)

That and the Cheney similarity have managed to disturb me.

Marvel was shut down in 1953, so these guys probably had some transitional time on their hands, and started doing this Mechanix Illustrated stuff ( also a Fawcett publication ).

Now I know too much. I’m going to have to read that Schaffenberger book that came out a few years ago.

steve