Of course, ninjas feature prominently in the 1967 Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, and also in James Clavell’s Shogun novel (which got turned into a miniseries), but Van Lustbader’s The Ninja is arguably the first spark to ignite the ninja craze of the 1980’s. According to my intarweb research (read: wikipedia, so take it with a grain of salt), The Ninja was released in April 1980– while the Chuck Norris flick The Octogon (which can be seen as one of the first films to really feature the Hollywood Ninja) didn’t come out ’til August of the same year. This puts it well before the TMNT (1984), the famous Frank Miller run on Daredevil that brought us Elektra and The Hand (1981), or even the classic Cannon film Enter the Ninja, starring the great Sho Kosugi (1981). What makes Eric Van Lustbader’s The Ninja more interesting, however, is that it was released in 1980. And why not? Ninjas are freakin’ sweet, and there aren’t enough ninja novels out there. If you’ve been paying attention, you should know that a book like this is quite relevant to my interests. And he gave me a fancy beer, too! And it wasn’t even my birthday!
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