Red Tornado (Ma Hunkel)
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- For information on the Silver Age Red Tornado, see: Red Tornado (android).
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The first comic book character called Red Tornado is a fictional character, a superheroine in the DC Comics universe, debuting during the Golden Age of Comic Books. Created by Sheldon Mayer, she first appeared in her civilian identity as Abigail Mathilda "Ma" Hunkel in All-American Publications' All-American Comics #3 (June 1939), and became the Red Tornado in All-American Comics #20 (Nov. 1940). As the Red Tornado, she was one of the first superhero parodies, as well as one of the first female superheroes, and, when occasionally disguised as a man, comics first cross-dressing heroine.[1] (Madame Fatal, earlier that year, was the first cross-dressing hero.)
Ma Hunkel was a working mother whose costume consisted of longjohns and a cooking pot on her head. She adopted the identity of the Red Tornado to fight local criminals in her New York City neighborhood, inspired by her son's admiration for the superhero Green Lantern. The character's popularity was such that she was given a cameo in the first adventure of the Justice Society of America, visiting the JSA's headquarters but being forced by a humorous mishap (her pants split) to leave without having the chance to apply for membership. However, later Justice Society stories have declared Ma to be an honorary member of the team.
Ma's last name is frequently misspelled as "Hunkle." Due to her bright red longjohns costume and roly-poly build, she was sometimes jokingly referred to as the Red Tomato.
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[edit] Publication history
Initially as simply Ma Hunkel, the Golden Age Red Tornado originated in Sheldon Meyer's semi-autobiographical humor feature "Scribbly", about a boy cartoonist, in All-American Comics. The feature ran through All-American Comics #59, in 1944,[2] the year DC Comics absorbed All-American Publications.
The character reappeared in a three-page "Scribbly" story by Mayer in DC's Secret Origins #29 (Aug. 1986). She also appeared briefly in 1998's DC Universe Holiday Bash II special, in the story "I Left My Heart at the Justice Society Canteen", and in All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant #1 (Sept. 1999), in a story, "Way of the Amazon", in which Ma Hunkel takes valorous center stage amid Liberty Belle, Phantom Lady, and Wonder Woman. She has continued to make sporadic appearances through the mid-2000s.
[edit] Fictional character biography
A strapping woman of indeterminate age, the widowed, redhaired Ma Hunkel ran a small grocery store in Manhattan while raising two young children. It came to pass one day that a gang started pressing the people in the neighborhood for protection money. Inspired by Scribbly and Huey's stories about Green Lantern, Ma made a helmet/mask by cutting two holes in a sauce pan and a costume from red longjohns, a cape and a T-shirt. She took the name of The Red Tornado and shut down the protection racket in no time. Ma Hunkel was later joined in her adventures as The Red Tornado by her daughter Sisty and Scribbly's younger brother Dinky, who called themselves the Cyclone Kids.
In Young Justice #16 (Jan. 2000), her by-then middle aged former sidekicks, who had married each other, said that Ma had died of natural causes. In JSA #55 (Feb. 2004), however, Ma was revealed as being alive, with the explanation that, after testifying against a local mob in 1950, she was placed in the Witness Protection Program and her death faked. Alan Scott, Jay Garrick, Hawkman, and Wildcat visit Ma on Christmas in a small town in New Hampshire to inform her that the last relative of the gang she had testified against had died, and she was free to resume contact with her family. The retired Red Tornado was appointed the custodian of the Justice Society Museum.
In her eighties in modern-day stories, Ma is a genial, motherly woman with a fiery personality. Like a doting grandparent, she coddles the JSA members, even old-timers like Green Lantern and Hawkman. She's still a bit of a scrapper, being highly proficient wielding a frying pan, even helping Wildcat, Stargirl and Jakeem Thunder defend the brownstone against the Injustice Society in JSA: Classified. Ma is well-liked by every member of the JSA, in part because of her expert skills at cooking, especially when it comes to baked treats.
In Justice Society of America #1 (Dec. 2006), Ma's granddaughter Maxine Hunkel joins the JSA. Ma herself, in mid-2000s stories, presents herself with a more professional, scholarly image than in her middle-age.
