Part III- 2013 Horrors Of War II

Today is June 6^th, D-Day. 69 years ago the largest amphibious assault in history led to a beach head on the coast of Normandy which changed the tide of war for the Allies and allowed them to begin the final march to Berlin. In total there were 155,000 soldiers from 11 nations that took part in the invasion along with 195,000 naval personnel and 5,000 ships in support. I find it fitting that I end my three part review of the upcoming Horrors of War II release on an important day in the history of World War II.

 

Today I will cover the “big” hits, cut signature cards and art cards.

 

In a close out post covering Horrors of War Series II, Famous Fabrics has released a preliminary list of the cut signature cards that are included on the checklist. HoW Series I cut signature checklist was made up with a large collection of Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War with a number of veterans from other conflicts like the American Revolution, Gulf War, Cold War and War on Terror. The checklist from HoW Series II is similar but includes some additional conflicts like Carlist Wars (a series of Spanish Civil Wars), Crimean War, Franco-Prussian War, the French Revolution, the Mexican Revolution and Second Boer War. So far there are well over 150 veterans on the checklist from 19 different conflicts, and this is only a preliminary list too.

 

Like Horrors of War I the card designs and card colors are different for each conflict for example yellow for WWII, purple for WWI and blue for the Civil War.

 

 

The checklist for the art cards is also complete and contains 16 people, the Czar Nicholas II card has not been shown yet. Here is the list of 16 people on the checklist:

Benito Mussolini

Douglas MacArthur
Hideki Tojo
Winston Churchill
Jim Doolittle
Charles de Gaule
Joseph Stalin
Napoleon Bonaparte
Emperor Hirohito
Adolph Hitler
Heinrich Himmler
Erwin Rommel
Osama bin Laden
Czar Nicholas II
Franz Ferdinand
Dwight Eisenhower

 

 

There were multiple artists involved with creating this set with one of my favorite artists, Jared Kelley, creating 7 of the cards. He did 7 personalities x 10 cards each, so he did a total of 70 cards (out of 160 total cards). If you are interested in seeing more of his work, he has worked with Famous Fabrics/Sport Kings/ITG and Upper Deck; here is a link to Jared Kelley’s web site

 

Here are the cards created by Jared, he also did Czar Nicholas II but I have not seen that card yet:

 

Here are the remaining 9 cards; I do not know who the other artist(s) are at this time.

 

 

Being a history based set I feel very connected to these types of releases, they are educational and informative. As George Santayana said (and repeated by History teachers to this day in various forms) “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.