Red Tornado (Ma Hunkel)

Red Tornado
"Ma" Hunkel, the Golden Age Red Tornado. Art by Sheldon Mayer.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	(As Ma Hunkel): All-American Comics #3 (June 1939) (As Red Tornado): All-American Comics #20 (November 1940)
Created by	Sheldon Mayer
In-story information
Alter ego	Abigail Mathilda "Ma" Hunkel
Team affiliations	Justice Society of America
Abilities	Great cook Surprising physical strength

The 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 (possibly the very first), and, when occasionally disguised as a man, comics' first cross-dressing heroine. (Madame Fatal, earlier that year, was the first cross-dressing hero.)

Initially as simply Ma Hunkel, the Golden Age Red Tornado originated in Sheldon Mayer's semi-autobiographical humor feature "Scribbly", about a boy cartoonist, in All-American Comics. The feature ran through All-American Comics #59, in 1944, 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 had a one-panel appearance in Animal Man "Deus Ex Machine", in a sort of limbo for characters who at the time weren't written into mainstream continuity.

In Alex Ross's classic 1996 graphic novel Kingdom Come, set in an alternative DC future, the "Original Red Tornado" is identified as Ma Hunkel: she can just be seen at the top-left hand side of the Justice League line-up which includes Superman and Norman McCay. In issue 3, (page 135 of the collected edition), panel 1, she can be seen on a balcony looking down at Superman and McCay and wearing a far more sophisticated, armour-like costume.