Though The Boxer wasn't going to happen for Marvel US, I'd been talking to an old friend and colleague, Richard Burton, about doing some scripting work for his current comic, Battle Action Force. The old IPC comic Battle had been enhanced by adding the licensed characters from the toy range Action Force (in the US known as GI Joe). One particular character caught my eye, the ninja Storm Shadow. I figured I could make something out of this neglected character - and besides, ninjas were dead popular around 1986.
While there is some historical doubt that ninjas actually existed, at least in the organised way they have been portrayed in the media over the last twenty-odd years - I have to admit that the concept is endlessly fascinating.
Yet despite my interest and modest knowledge of the subject, the Storm Shadow story wasn't all plain sailing. Though I had the excellent Spanish artist Vanyo on the story, I'd tried to spice up the action with the American trick of a splash page.

The idea was that is Storm Shadow is a martial artist, the best way to depict martial arts is by using large impact frames and rapid-cut, "stop-motion" sequences. However, Richard's managing editor was an old-school IPC editorial type called Barrie Tomlinson. You can see his credit on the Striker comic strip in The Sun. He felt that a scripter who asked for a single frame splash page was some kind of shirker. As far as he was concerned a comic page should have six frames. Anything less was just short-changing the company. A little while after I handed that script in (I think I was actually in the office being interviewed by 2000AD Managing Editor Gil Page for the 2000AD Deputy Editor job) Richard introduced me to Barrie Tomlinson. "Ah, yes," he said. "You're that scripter we had all the problems with." Plainly a man who views his glass as being half empty.
And though the "Assassin" story I wrote for that late-86 issue of Battle Action Force was my first and last Storm Shadow story, I would return to the subject of ninjas a few years later. But that's a story for another time.