The original Red Tomato ... err ... I mean Tornado wasn't a fancy android with amazing whirlwind powers, nor one of the Earth's elemental protectors. The Red Tornado was, very simply, Ma Hunkel.

Ma Hunkel was a housewife and grocery store owner who had simply had enough of the rampant crime in her neighborhood. She faced down a pair of Tubbs Torponi's thugs, who were trying to get protection money out of her. Her daughter Sisty and her friend Dinky Jibbet had been playing in the back of the goons' car, and had accidentally been kidnapped when they fled the grocery store. After the police refused to do anything to get the children back, Dinky's brother Scribbly mentioned that the Green Lantern would have the situation solved in a minute. That idle statement inspired Ma to take on the multi-colored garb of the Red Tornado … getting the kids back safely and bringing Torponi's gang to justice in one fell swoop. And starting a legend that still lives on today. Well, it does, too. Kinda.

In that steadily increasing pantheon of what many of the uninitiated would call "dumb" super-heroes, The Red Tornado is oft mentioned as one of the founding inductees. Unfortunately for those poor souls who have never read Sheldon Mayer's work, they don't know squat about the character ... to them, it is just another Golden Age character with a reputation for being lame. Let's get this clear right at the start: Ma Hunkel is NOT a "dumb" super-hero. The Red Tornado is actually one of the first, and still one of the best, satires of the super-hero, done as the fledgling comic book industry was barely out of the gate. It is definitely NOT LAME, even by most modern standards.

Ma Hunkel had begun appearing in the wonderful Scribbly feature in All-American Comics #3. For those who have never had the pleasure, Scribbly Jibbet was a renowned boy cartoonist for the Morning Dispatch (based not a little on Sheldon Mayer himself) who drew a strip called "Why Big Brudders Leave Home" (which was usually the closing panel each installment of Scribbly). Ma Hunkel came on the scene when Scribbly and her son Huey met and started fighting, Ma acting as the facilitator that instead had the young boys becoming best friends. Scribbly's brother, Dinky, also took up with Ma's young daughter Sisty (who could wallop 'em just like her ma).

Ma was a not-quite-so-simple housewife until All-American Comics #20, when Huey's Uncle Gus hit a winner at the race track, and Ma used the winnings to buy out Schultz's Grocery store. This event, in turn, leads to the encounter the protection racket goons, and the subsequent appearance of The Red Tornado. After that, crime dried up in their neighborhood. Heck, a lot of stuff that wasn't a crime stopped happening, like the butcher overcharging his customers, all due to the continued presence of The Red Tornado. Scribbly even got a raise at the newspaper for drawing a picture of the new "mystery man" (as the super-heroes were often known in the early days).

The local police, ineffective though they were, didn't take kindly to vigilantism (and especially disliking getting caught in lies for taking credit for the Red Tornado's good deeds) and went after our hero (well, heroine, but they didn't and probably still don't know that). Ma got the cops off her trail for a short while by putting her costume on a gorilla and letting the police catch him, making everyone think the Red Tornado was just a big hoax.

Soon after that, Sisty got the idea to keep the spirit of The Red Tornado going by making costumes for herself and Dinky and going out into the neighborhood as The Cyclone Kids. Unfortunately, their first escapade nearly got them killed by a couple of extortionists, and it was only the timely and inadvertent intervention of The Red Tornado (who had been stuck at the end of a flagpole just over the kids) that saved their lives, and told criminals everywhere (or at least all over the neighborhood) that the Red Tornado was back in town!

Interestingly, Ma Hunkel wasn't only the only super-hero to be inspired by the exploits of The Green Lantern (who happened to hold the lead feature in All-American Comics at the time). The first issue of Sensation Comics had Ted Grant being inspired to adopt his Wildcat guise as a result of someone mentioning Alan Scott's adventures.

The Red Tornado's most famous appearance anywhere has to be in All-Star Comics #3, in which she, like Johnny Thunder, basically crashed the ground-breaking first meeting of The Justice Society of America. She didn't stay to recount adventures with The Flash, The Green Lantern, Hawkman, Doctor Fate, The Atom, The Spectre, The Sandman and Hourman. In fact, she left pretty early into the festivities, since breaking into the dinner meeting caused her have a rather embarrassing accident (she ripped and lost her pants climbing through the window). At lot of sources and people contend that this means that The Red Tornado was never a member of the Justice Society. She's been shown in a few of team pin-ups sitting with them, and she did appear in that pivotal first issue (well third issue, if you're a stickler). Heck, Superman, Batman and Robin were considered members of the Justice Society and they didn't even make it to that first dinner. Ma even had a modern-day namesake, the android Red Tornado, who ended up moving to Earth-One. As far as this writer is concerned, The original Red Tornado was a member of the Justice Society of America. So there. PBBBBTTT!

There hasn't been a lot seen of the Red Tornado since Scribbly's strip ended in All-American Comics #59, and very few of the original stories have been reprinted. To my knowledge, Ma Hunkel has appeared in those JSA team pin-ups I mentioned (one notable one was in Justice League of America #76 as I recall), and was featured in a story in the second Secret Origins series that was written and drawn by Sheldon Mayer himself, though it really didn't end up being an origin of any kind, not that anyone who was a fan of Shelly's work would care. Beyond that, the appearances of the original Red Tomato ... umm sorry, I mean Tornado have been very few and far between.

Though all hope is not lost for the fans of Ma Hunkel. The Red Tornado appeared in a story set during World War Two in the (fairly) recent All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant #1. This tale was one of the more fun stories I have read in recent years, as Hippolyta (the Golden Age Wonder Woman), Liberty Belle and Phantom Lady are all talking about the role of women in society and respond to a suspected sabotage attempt at an airplane factory, where Ma just happened to work as a riveter. The Red Tornado appears on the scene, and our heroines think he is a man trying to steal their glory throughout the whole battle. Even Hippolyta is impressed when Ma reveals her true identity to them and heads off to make dinner for her family.

It's very good to know that someone at DC Comics, and especially someone in the JSA editorial loop, remembers Ma Hunkel.