If you were a young devourer of manga and anime in the 1980s, creator Takao Saito will always be the man who gave us Golgo 13. However in the mid-2000s the good folk at Animeigo released two early 70s live action … Continued
Compiled from a series of posts published Summer 2009 Mitsuteru Yokoyama is probably the second most prolific creator of crossover ninja properties next to Shirato Sanpei. Both Kagemaru of Iga and Masked Ninja Akakage expanded from their pulp roots to … Continued
Charles Vincent Gruzanski was a travelled student and teacher of Japanese martial arts, including modern ninjutsu. His son Robert maintains an invaluable website as a memorial to his father’s accomplishments and passions. His scans of 1960s Japanese ninja articles and … Continued
20+ weeks on The New York Times‘ Best Seller list, millions of copies in print, five sequels and enduring publication on all modern electronic platforms… Eric Van Lustbader‘s vanguard novel The Ninja turns 36 years old this month. It was easily the … Continued
Originally published in two parts — July 2009 Growing up in the pre-home video era often meant the only way to relive your favorite movie or TV property was the now extinct book-n-record. I positively wore out my GI Jo Adventure … Continued
Back in March of 2015 we posted some art, and plenty of speculation, about 80’s craze-era ninja comics from Yugoslavia, and now we have some first hand info on them, thanks to VN reader and student of the arts Navid Bulbulija: … Continued
Lots of new readers lately, and I always love delving into the archives, exposing folks to some of the great stuff we posted back in the early years, so here’s an EXPANDED revisit of an article originally from November of 2009: … Continued
Yeah… THAT Ninja novel, and yeah… THAT John Carpenter! Coming later this year, big feature about this craze-kindling novel, the differences between it and the scripts, its time in big studio ‘development hell’ and what could have been (warts and … Continued
There were a couple of sellers on eBay last month that had ninja-themed comics from what was formerly Yugoslavia. Sadly, I’m broke as hell for the foreseeable future and they were priced too high anyway, so I didn’t keep track … Continued
I may just love the illustrated version of Henshin Ninja Arashi more than the much better known tokusatsu version… Kamen Rider and Cybog 009 creator Shotaro Ishinomori‘s manga slightly preceded the Toei TV show, although what would have had more production lead … Continued