I Bought an Original Painting of a Ninja

This Story Has More Twists and Turns than the Average Kung-Fu Flick

While all of my friends growing up in the 70s and 80s had a variety of action figures, each of them had their favorite line. Me? I was a Star Wars kid, mostly. Sure, I had a few Clash of the Titans figures and all four Tron figures, but Star Wars was always my thing. I was a Star Wars kid. I knew a He-Man kid, and a Fisher Price Adventure People kid, and at the end of my street lived a G.I. Joe kid.

Now personally I was never a G.I. Joe kid. I didn’t know anyone who was in the service and all those tanks and helicopters seemed boring to me when compared to land speeders and X-Wing Fighters. But one day, while visiting my friend down the street, he showed me an action figure that blew my mind.

It was a ninja. A white ninja. And his name was Storm Shadow.

The thing about G.I. Joe figures that even a Star Wars kid had to admit was that they were pretty cool. Unlike Kenner’s Star Wars figures, G.I. Joe figures bent at the elbows and knees. Now I’m sure at the time my friend at least tried to explain to me who Storm Shadow was and I’m gonna be real honest with you… I didn’t care then, and I barely care now. To me, he wasn’t some ninja that somehow existed in the G.I. Joe universe. To me, he was Cole, the protagonist from the 1981 film Enter the Ninja.

Enter the Ninja was the first of three films released by The Cannon Group, Inc. Quickly followed by Revenge of the Ninja and Ninja III: The Domination, these films became known as the unofficial ninja trilogy. In regards to story, the films are completely unrelated. They all share a single actor (Sho Kosugi) and were all Cannon films, but there is no overlap in plot or characters.

It was 1983’s Revenge of the Ninja that kicked off the ninja craze of the 1980s. By the time it hit theaters I had already signed up for karate classes and within a year or two I would own my ninja suit and an arsenal of weapons: some real (throwing stars) and some not so real (foam nunchucks).

Now, everybody knows that all ninjas wore black. Hiding in shadows was kind of their thing. At least that’s what I thought until I attended a sleepover at a friend’s house who happened to have a copy of Enter the Ninja, which features not only good guy Cole in a white ninjs suit, but red ninjas, yellow ninjas, blue ninjas… a whole freakin’ army of rainbow colored ninjas!

So by the mid-80s, ninjas were super popular… but not, like, mainstream popular. There was never going to be a line of toys based on those Cannon films. I’m guessing most parents would have given a thumbs-down to a “I just came home and found my entire family has been slaughtered by ninjas” playset. Take it from me, parents just don’t understand.

Storm Shadow — the white ninja from G.I. Joe — was the closest I was ever going to get to owning a ninja action figure. So, I traded my friend a couple of LEGO space men and a banana Moonpie for his.

The cool thing about all of those toylines back then was that because they were all the exact same height, all figures worked with all toys. Han Solo and Chewbacca used to take my green Fisher Price Adventure People van out to the river for a relaxing getaway from all that smuggling. The Clash of the Titans figures occasionally took my Tron cycles out for rides. Storm Shadow had no problem fitting in, both figuratively and literally, with the rest of my action figures.

I need to switch gears and tell you about my friend, Christopher Tupa. Tupa’s an artist — like, the real deal. I met him through the Retroist, where he was drawing fun retro mashups like this one of Mr. T and He-Man. It’s T-Man.

You can find a bunch of pictures Tupa has drawn over at his Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/artofctupa). Eventually, Tupa set up his own website with some of his other pictures and artistic endeavors and eventually he added a section where he sells originals of his artwork. Most of them are pen and ink and colored with watercolors. I absolutely love the style, and it was while I was scrolling through all the things he had drawn and put up for sale that I ran across this:

An original pen, ink, and watercolor painting of Storm Shadow. The White Ninja.

The finger in the picture is mine. Faster than a ninja can draw his sword, I bought it. the artwork arrived in packing so think and rigid I thought I’d forgotten and ordered a hardback book. After peeling away layers of cardboard and manilla envelopes, I found the white ninja inside, hiding. You know, like how ninjas do.

I can’t believe how inexpensive frames are on Amazon. I bought a pack of six frames for like $22. The very first thing I framed was this artwork. I’m about to hang it just outside my bathroom. It says, “wash your hands… or else.” More than that, it reminds of me all those ridiculous ninjas movies, and all the time I spent running around my neighborhood in the dark while wearing a ninja suit, and most of all, it reminds me of that Storm Shadow action figure I got from my friend in the mid-80s and is still mixed in somewhere with all my other Star Wars action figures.

Check out Tupa’s artwork and website here: https://ctupa.com/Home.html