Wednesday, September 4, 2024

HOTW- Red Tornado (Ma Hunkel)

From Wiki- In the original comics in the 1940s, Ma Hunkel is a working mother whose costume consists of longjohns and a cooking pot on her head. She adopts 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 splitting, to leave without having the chance to apply for membership. Later Justice Society stories have declared Ma to be an honorary member of the team.  Me again (until the last paragraph):

Ma Hunkel was formidable as a human wrecking ball, and even more formidable as the Red Tornado. I haven't been able to read many of her adventures, or "his" adventures, since no one knew the Tornado was a woman back then.  This does make her the first cross-dressing woman in comics, and she pre-dates Wonder Woman by a few months as well.  No one ever asked Red Tornado if she was male, so that is on them.  The JSA would later find out who she was, and they never cared.  I would so purchase a TPB of reprints of the Red Tornado.

Initially introduced as simply Ma Hunkel, she originated in Sheldon Mayer's semi-autobiographical humor feature in All-American Comics #3 as a supporting character of Scribbly the Boy Cartoonist.[3]

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