A rather strange but visually-striking - sometimes beautiful - set of cards with its theme about bloodshed through the ages. Some of the images do not even fit the theme - e.g. Cards 9 and 10; others seem little more than propaganda - e.g. Cards 24 and 71. We find Bible stories and outer space plus a few cards not about violence at all. And where did Card 26 about an airliner come from? The subjects of some cards - e.g. Cards 70 and 71 - look like they came from Bush's America after 9/11. I guess some things just do not change. Bowman here displays, as in their Red Menace set, extremely right-wing attitudes, promotion of fear, fascination with violence and misery, embrace of Biblical myths - an odd mix for trading cards, but if you want to understand the official American mindset of the early 1950s, this set of cards brings it back vividly.
