With the success- and somewhat failure- in creating a super-powered android, Professor Ivo decided to create more like his initial champion, the Red Tornado, to further his career where Tornado had gone rogue. Along the way, he developed three more androids, each now embued with the ability to control the remaining classical elements (fire, earth, and water, now that Tornado had become an air elemental). Although they were initially a success, Ivo soon abandoned his creations temporarily, either decommissioning them as he had done with Red Torpedo, or covertly integrating them into soceity as pseudo-sleeper agents to be reactivated at his leisure, has he did with Red Inferno.
However, one thing he hadn't counted on, was their programming following too closely to that of the Red Tornado, and one by one, each of them began to develop their own personalities, desires, independent thought, etc. They became self-aware. They had gained their own humanity.
Red Inferno was no different from his other siblings. Inserted into human society as a seemingly normal teenager, Inferno was given the alias "Seth Aiden," and placed in a foster home, having been told that his parents died when he was very young. None the wiser to his true nature, Aiden lived out most of his life believing the lie, that is until recently when he began attending high school. There, he was something of a social outcast, looked down upon by his peers, and a favorite target of the jocks' habitual bullying. The fact that he had a distinct aversion to water made it even easier for them to pick on him, especially during swim class. It was during one of these instances of bullying that his true nature suddenly, and violently came to light.
Holding him under the water, the bullies somehow managed to trigger his powers by forcing him into a situation of "fight or flight," causing him to spontaneously combust and rise into the steam-filled air, now garbed in a uniform that resembled his predecessor. Panicking by the fact that he was on fire, Aiden rocketed haphazardly out of the school and out into the open, straining mentally to control his newfound powers through the panic. Unbeknownst to Aiden, Traya Smith, the daughter of the Red Tornado, also attended his school and upon seeing he shared similarities to her father, became concerned for him and immediately went to contact her father.
Eventually, he made his way back to his neighborhood, where he was confronted by his "brother," the geokinetic Red Volcano, who only moments ago decimated the entire area with violent abandon. Playing the part of a caring brother, Volcano took the distraught Inferno into the upper atmosphere, lying to him and saying that his parents were murdered by government agents. Angered by this false revelation, Inferno played directly into Volcano's hands and took his agression out on nearby satellites in an impressive display of pyrokinesis, unwittingly becoming a pawn in murderous android's plan to destroy his fellow androids, but mostly to make Red Tornado suffer.
In Other Media
Red Inferno appears in the Young Justice episode "Homefront" alongside his sister, Red Torpedo.
However, unlike their mainstream counterparts, both Inferno and Torpedo's "genders" are reversed, making Inferno female and Torpedo male. Their backstories have also been altered as well, to fit the history of Earth-16. The Red Family in this world were the brain-children of Dr. Thomas Oscar Morrow (Dr. T.O. Morrow), his attempts at creating the perfect humanoid synthetic lifeform, so complex that it bordered on sentience and humanity. His secondary goal in creating the Red Family was to obliterate the rising superhero phenomenon. When Red Torpedo failed in this aspect, he turned to Red Inferno. She was created to believe that she was a real human, and a superhero as well, taking the alias of "Firebrand," and joining the ranks of the fledgling Justice Society of America. However, it was her belief in her own false humanity that lead to her downfall and discovery, as she bravely protected the Flash (Jay Garrick) from a lethal blast of Dr. Alchemy's raygun at a press rally in Washington, D.C. during the Society's early days, seemingly "dying" as a result.
Both she and her "brother", Red Torpedo, are reactivated by Morrow to raid Mount Justice in Happy Harbor, Rhode Island, and retrieve their "younger brother," Red Tornado, who had been hacked earlier by their "father." The both successfully subdued a majority of the Team in their attack, only to be defeated by Artemis and Robin, when the former shot an arrow into the makeshit E.M.P. emitter to complete the circuit and fry them. However, this victory for the Team was short-lived when it was revealed that Morrow had overridden Tornado's circuits as well, and rendered the victors unconscious by creating a vaccuum with his powers.
They reappeared three episodes later in "Humanity," when it was revealed that Morrow had reunited his "children" to witness the birth of their "little brother", Red Volcano. He had programmed Volcano without humanity, making him a violent psychopath, who intended to prematurely trigger the supervolcano beneath their base in Yellowstone National Park, causing a new volcanic winter to wipe out a majority of Earth's human populace and enable him to conquer the planet with an army of androids based of the designs of the Red Family. However, thanks to the timely arrival of the Team and Zatanna, who had forced Dr. Ivo to reveal the location of Morrow's base, his plans were foiled. Though the Team played an integral part in this, it was ultimately Inferno and Torpedo who defeated him, combining their powers to sink him into the lava springing up from the ground, and then rapidly cool it so the would be inoperable and brittle, allowing them to be smashed and permenantly destroyed. In the end, they lived up to Red Tornado's description of them when they asked why the should help if they were no longer human...
"The premise of your question is flawed. You were never human, but you were heroes."
Log in to comment