We Are the Mutants
@wearethemutants.com
https://wearethemutants.com/
An online magazine focusing on Cold War-era popular and outsider culture.
An online magazine focusing on Cold War-era popular and outsider culture.
It's a sad, sad tale: the wanton destruction of prime mid-century American kitsch. Mutants was on it back in 2017:
October 8, 2025 at 5:42 PM
It's a sad, sad tale: the wanton destruction of prime mid-century American kitsch. Mutants was on it back in 2017:
Hope all our readers are still present and accounted for
The Illustrated Rapture: ‘There’s a New World Coming’, 1974
Hal Lindsey's bestselling The Late, Great Planet Earth, originally published by the Zondervan Corporation in 1970, revolutionized the Christian publishing industry and introduced the mainstream to rap...
wearethemutants.com
September 23, 2025 at 8:10 PM
Hope all our readers are still present and accounted for
"A Live Arena Show needs action and dynamics—it needs conflict—and so the real protagonists turned out to be militaristic, powerful, confident, aggressive (and clad in fucking amazing clothes): the gorillas."
Yours Apefully: The ‘Planet of the Apes’ Live Arena Show, 1976
By the summer of 1976, I was a child steeped in animal terror. Well, steeped in loads of types of terror, really, seeing as I lived in mortal fear of UFOs, bigfoot, ghosts with tricorn hats, the Wirrn...
wearethemutants.com
September 7, 2025 at 5:38 PM
"A Live Arena Show needs action and dynamics—it needs conflict—and so the real protagonists turned out to be militaristic, powerful, confident, aggressive (and clad in fucking amazing clothes): the gorillas."
"The foghorn mourns. The black wharfs are approaching."
"This is not a dream."
"This is not a dream."
“I’m Sellin’ Folks A Dream”: Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz’s ‘Brought To Light’
In 1989, at the very end of the Cold War, a group of four prominent mainstream and alternative comic book writers and artists created a double volume graphic novel exposing the rampant injustices, …
wearethemutants.com
September 6, 2025 at 6:12 PM
"The foghorn mourns. The black wharfs are approaching."
"This is not a dream."
"This is not a dream."
"You could say that Gamma World is a game in which silly things are taken overly seriously, and Paranoia is a game about deadly serious things played for laughs."
Gaming the Post-Apocalypse: ‘Gamma World’ and ‘Paranoia’
I wanted to talk about two tabletop roleplaying games that explored the aftermath of nuclear apocalypse. At first I was going to venture the thesis that <i>Gamma World</i>, which TSR released in 1978,...
wearethemutants.com
September 5, 2025 at 7:50 PM
"You could say that Gamma World is a game in which silly things are taken overly seriously, and Paranoia is a game about deadly serious things played for laughs."
"Wasn’t the future—that gleaming hypergrid of every TV commercial’s dreams—supposed to banish ghosts and hauntings and old things from my life forever?"
Squaring the Circle: An American Becomes One of the ‘Children of the Stones’
I didn't grow up in the UK and I didn't see Children of the Stones when it first aired in 1977 on ITV. I'm a product of the American suburbs who, just like a generation of slightly-older Britons, has ...
wearethemutants.com
August 15, 2025 at 8:11 PM
"Wasn’t the future—that gleaming hypergrid of every TV commercial’s dreams—supposed to banish ghosts and hauntings and old things from my life forever?"
ICYMI: We court collective controversy with our cinematic desert island discs.
We're back! Yeah, we finally did it. A list. 🎥
You Can Only Watch 20 Films for the Rest of Your Life
Think about the list strategically. It’s for the rest of your life! What will you watch when you’re sad? When you’re high? When the holidays roll around? When you’ve got the flu? When you need to beli...
wearethemutants.com
August 14, 2025 at 6:33 PM
ICYMI: We court collective controversy with our cinematic desert island discs.
We're back! Yeah, we finally did it. A list. 🎥
You Can Only Watch 20 Films for the Rest of Your Life
Think about the list strategically. It’s for the rest of your life! What will you watch when you’re sad? When you’re high? When the holidays roll around? When you’ve got the flu? When you need to beli...
wearethemutants.com
August 14, 2025 at 4:17 PM
We're back! Yeah, we finally did it. A list. 🎥
Reposted by We Are the Mutants
We're posting bonus ufology-related posts all day! #WorldUFODay
July 2, 2025 at 3:21 PM
We're posting bonus ufology-related posts all day! #WorldUFODay
Reposted by We Are the Mutants
Happy World UFO Day! If you're so inclined, give us a follow. #WorldUFODay
Meta post: this account posts random excerpts from the diaries of Jacques Vallée, Forbidden Science (Vols. 1-4, 1957-1999). Topics covered in the diaries include ufology, the occult and paranormal, retro computing/Silicon Valley history, and Cold War espionage and defense. Please spread the word!
July 2, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Happy World UFO Day! If you're so inclined, give us a follow. #WorldUFODay
Reposted by We Are the Mutants
Mil, my friendly neighbor, is a white witch in her late forties, a former National Security Agency employee. Instead of computer reference manuals and compiler printouts her office is filled with astrology books and dissertations on the Kabala. (9 Aug 1972)
June 11, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Mil, my friendly neighbor, is a white witch in her late forties, a former National Security Agency employee. Instead of computer reference manuals and compiler printouts her office is filled with astrology books and dissertations on the Kabala. (9 Aug 1972)
Reposted by We Are the Mutants
February 23, 2025 at 1:49 PM
happy birthday Philip David Charles Collins
"In the post-everything reality we inhabit, wry reappraisals of stuff previously considered dross are almost as common as derision, but I want to try and understand what the fuck it was about Collins that made him so compelling to me between... the early ’80s and No Jacket Required..."
There’s Just an Empty Space: Phil Collins vs. the Philistines
One of the best parts of starting We Are The Mutants (nearly two years ago now!) has been becoming friends with my co-editors and learning about all the things that they find interesting. So when Rich...
wearethemutants.com
January 30, 2025 at 1:50 PM
happy birthday Philip David Charles Collins
Drink full, American, and descend.
Farewell to David Lynch.
Farewell to David Lynch.
Threnody in Black and Gold: ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ as Cold War Historiography
By Michael Grasso David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return arrived on television screens in the summer of 2017, promising to take fans of the original 1990-1991 ABC series back to …
wearethemutants.com
January 16, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Drink full, American, and descend.
Farewell to David Lynch.
Farewell to David Lynch.
RIP Bob Uecker.
“A Most Congenial Group”: Miller Lite TV Ads, 1974 – 1991
The development of “light” beer came with a commensurate marketing challenge: how to persuade the traditionally masculine beer-drinking audience to try a lower-calorie version of their …
wearethemutants.com
January 16, 2025 at 4:32 PM
RIP Bob Uecker.
Raindrops from your eyes
Washing all the mad out of you
Raindrops from your eyes
It's gonna make you feel better
Washing all the mad out of you
Raindrops from your eyes
It's gonna make you feel better
“It’s All Right To Cry”: The Liberatory Potential of ‘Free to Be… You and Me’
By Michael Grasso In 1972, actress Marlo Thomas, who’d made her name on the hit ’60s TV series That Girl, along with a team of entertainers and the support of the newly-founded Ms. Foun…
wearethemutants.com
January 11, 2025 at 12:41 AM
Raindrops from your eyes
Washing all the mad out of you
Raindrops from your eyes
It's gonna make you feel better
Washing all the mad out of you
Raindrops from your eyes
It's gonna make you feel better
Reposted by We Are the Mutants
In honor of this Xmas miracle, make sure to check out my @wearethemutants.com article about MAX HEADROOM creators Rocky Morton & Annabel Jankel from 2022: wearethemutants.com/2022/06/22/p...
December 27, 2024 at 12:18 AM
In honor of this Xmas miracle, make sure to check out my @wearethemutants.com article about MAX HEADROOM creators Rocky Morton & Annabel Jankel from 2022: wearethemutants.com/2022/06/22/p...
"In the Hot Wheels Service Station, an era of smaller, local, more interconnected, more personal, and more personable industry is frozen in amber."
Remembrance of Ramps Past: Hot Wheels Service Center Playset, 1979
A couple of years ago I posted an image on Twitter of the Hot Wheels Service Center Sto & Go playset seen above and got to feeling unexpectedly emotional (and more than a bit political) about i…
wearethemutants.com
December 21, 2024 at 4:36 PM
"In the Hot Wheels Service Station, an era of smaller, local, more interconnected, more personal, and more personable industry is frozen in amber."
A WATM holiday classic!
Gender Roles Included: The Unreal Estate of 1980s Playsets
In the 1980s, the action figure ruled the toy store shelves. Some kids were loyal to one franchise (I was a strictly My Little Pony girl, myself). Some children’s affections and parental pursestrings ...
wearethemutants.com
December 20, 2024 at 6:13 PM
A WATM holiday classic!
ICYMI: "What’s going on here is the quintessential late-1980s suburban American boy’s materialistic id unleashed."
Kool Kelly's Place: True Confessions of an '80s Bedroom
A few months ago my dad sent me a whole bunch of pictures on a flash drive. This was one of them. It's my bedroom in 1987. I’m 15...
wearethemutants.com
December 18, 2024 at 1:06 AM
ICYMI: "What’s going on here is the quintessential late-1980s suburban American boy’s materialistic id unleashed."
Reposted by We Are the Mutants
We had a TON of fun raking Kelly over the coals on this one. Happy holidays, all. 😆
December 17, 2024 at 5:21 PM
We had a TON of fun raking Kelly over the coals on this one. Happy holidays, all. 😆
New today! It's @keroberts.bsky.social's bedroom, guys. In 1987. Be nice.
Kool Kelly's Place: True Confessions of an '80s Bedroom
A few months ago my dad sent me a whole bunch of pictures on a flash drive. This was one of them. It's my bedroom in 1987. I’m 15...
wearethemutants.com
December 17, 2024 at 5:21 PM
New today! It's @keroberts.bsky.social's bedroom, guys. In 1987. Be nice.