Journey into Mystery (1996 series) #517

FBI Agent Carter Tenko visits elderly Lottie Hederman at her home in Portland, Maine, as she is the only witness to “the Incident” which needs to be cleared up. So they sit down to a cup of tea and she tells her story:

She was at her bank when it was robbed by a band of criminals, who took everyone hostage. They arranged for a getaway van and loaded the money and seven hostages inside, including Lottie and new teller Nancy Rushman. As they drove away, the crooks talked about the brilliant plan of their boss, the Ebon Flame, to score the cash to fund the revolution. And one guy mentioned how explosives were placed in the vault to destroy the bank and all the police examining it. Nancy perked up, the van screeched to a halt, and the bad guys came crashing out. Nancy was the Black Widow: she beat down all of the crooks and ran to the bank where a nervous deputy tried to stop her. Instead she knocked him down and fired her Widow’s Bites to slam the vault shut, containing the blast. Lottie expresses how nervous she was with a superhero in her ordinary little town.

Lottie continues, that Black Widow interrogated the suspects until her methods made the police nervous so she left, certain there was an insider at the bank. Natasha visited Lottie and accused her of being the insider. Lottie told the Widow about her son, Herve, and his involvement in radical politics. Natasha hacked into Herve’s computer to discover he was a member of an urban terrorist group called FreedomsLight. Lottie was saddened that her son likely planned the bank robbery.

The next day, as the robbers were being transferred, the police were attacked by Ebon Flame, previously unseen leader of FreedomsLight and the prisoners freed. They went to their underground base where they are preparing for another revolution…but Agent Tenko wonders how Lottie could be describing this as though she were there but Lottie tosses it off as absurd…then she collapses to the floor and Tenko calls for an ambulance….