This is another one of those things where I was looking at something, and an idea popped into my head that I had to do in order to get it out of my brain. A fake cover, sort of a “What if DC gave Sheldon Mayer a dedicated Red Tornado comic back in the Golden Age?”
This happened as I was re-reading DC’s JSA All-Stars Archives (Volume 1), featuring solo stories of secondary and tertiary characters who showed up with the Justice Society in All-Star Comics at one point or another. And part of that collection was a batch of stories featuring Sheldon Mayer’s Scribbly, the Boy Cartoonist, where the Red Tornado debuted.
Initially, the first Red Tornado character I encountered in comics as a kid was a completely different character! He was an android, and had become part of the Silver Age Justice League. When not in his heroic identity, this Silver Age version of the Red Tornado was in the midst of learning how to be more human (a bit like Marvel’s the Vision). After a little while, I learned of the prior existence of the original Red Tornado, a heroic identity adopted by Ma Hunkel in Sheldon Mayer’s Scribbly the Boy Cartoonist installment for All-American Comics #20.
The Red Tornado was played for fun and laughs, in that early era when superheroes were still sometimes called “mystery men.” And as modern superhero comics seem determined to take themselves ever more deathly serious, I find myself becoming ever more appreciative of comics that are fun. After all, I think “fun” is a big part of why most of us got into reading comics in the first place!
I should talk a bit about Sheldon Mayer, creator of the Red Tornado. Mayer was a rarity for the Golden Age: an artist, writer and editor all in one. He worked briefly as an editor for the McClure Syndicate (for M.C. Gaines), where he came across Siegel and Shuster’s unsold Superman strip, which he “fell in love with.” He talked it up so much to anyone who would listen, he eventually convinced Gaines to take it up to Harry Donenfeld, who was looking for original strips to run in a new comic they were going to call Action Comics. To use a cliché phrase (one appropriate in this case), “the rest is history.”
A number of Golden Age artists credited Mayer as being very helpful to them as an editor. Being a writer and artist, he had a perspective that other editors didn’t. Mayer on his own as a writer and artist did a lot of fun, creative comics! I recently discovered that the Scribbly strip he did for All-American Comics (where he created the Red Tornado) eventually got its own title for awhile post-WWII. Probably his best-known and longest-running title would be Sugar and Spike, about two babies who communicated in baby talk that adults were unable to understand. In the early ’70s, he also wrote and drew a number of large format Collectors’ Edition comics featuring Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for DC. I kind of feel like I need to see if I can get some more of Mayer’s work in my collection!
DC never did a dedicated Red Tornado title, but when I was reading that material in the Archive Edition I mentioned up top, I came across the splash panel that kicked off the Scribbly installment for All-American Comics #23, and realized that it would work great as a cover. Hence the attribution (though I put my own little spin on the idea).
Hope you like this, and that you’re enjoying the holiday season!
