Journey into Mystery #517
The Fire Next Time… Chapter One
FBI Agent Carter Tenko has come to Portland, Main, to interview an elderly woman named Lottie Hederman. Lottie is the only witnesses of a recent terrorist operation and Tenko is seeking answers. Hederman, the descendant of Holocaust survivors, is glad to hear that the FBI were able to capture members of this group as their evil is not unlike that of the Nazis.[1] After brewing a fresh pot of tea, Lottie tells him her story…
Lottie explains that things are quiet in this town, as they are far removed from the usual terrorist threats and superhero battles. That all changed when members of the FreedomsLight terrorist organization held a bank heist in town. The group took the customers hostage, and their leader used the brand new teller, Nancy Rushman, as a human shield as he negotiated with police for an escape vehicle.[2] When the van arrives, the terrorists took both Nancy and Lottie as hostages.
As they are making their getaway, the terrorists gloat about how they planted a bomb in the bank vault to keep the cops busy. Hearing this, Nancy breaks free from her bonds and attacks their captors. As it turns out, Rushman was actually the Black Widow in disguise. After incapacitating the terrorists, the Widow raced back to the bank and managed to slam the vault door shut before the bomb went off, saving countless lives in the process….
Hearing all of this, Carter Tenko is impressed and figures that Lottie must be glad it was all over. That’s when Hederman tells him that things have just barely begun.
… After the members of FreedomsLight were in police custody, the Black Widow insisted on interrogating them herself. Although her methods were brutal, she was able to learn that they had a man on the inside at the bank. As it turned out, it was Lottie’s son Herve. The Widow confronted Lottie about this and the old woman brought her up to her son’s room. She learned how Herve lost his job two years ago. Blaming it on the government, he retreated to the internet where he found other likeminded individuals. Hacking into the computer, the Black Widow learned that Herve was deeply involved in FreedomsLight, an accelerationist group seeking to overthrow the United States government. The Widow then instructed Lottie that if she heard from her son to contact her directly, saying it was her best chance of seeing her son alive again. However, the Widow told her not to mistake that for a promise.
The following day, when the captured members of FreedomsLight were being transported to prison, the officers were ambushed by FreedomsLight’s leader, the mysterious Ebon Flame. With skills on par with the Black Widow, the Ebon Flame was able to rescue the captured terrorists and spirit them back to the hideout for the organization’s central operations…
… Hearing all this, Agent Tenko is surprised to hear all of this since Lottie couldn’t have known all these details unless she was there. Suddenly, the old woman suffers a heart attack and collapses to the floor. Calling for an ambulance, Tenko prays that Mrs. Hederman doesn’t die until she can tell him the full story of what happened.
Recurring Characters
Black Widow, Carter Tenko, Lottie Hederman, FreedomsLight
Continuity Notes
It’s later revealed in Journey into Mystery #519 that this is not the real Lottie Hederman, but the Black Widow in disguise. The real Lottie was actually a war criminal who founded FreedomsLight. There are some issue with this that I’ll get into below. A lot of the facts in this story are also lies since the Black Widow is trying to expose Tenko as a member of FreedomsLight.
Nancy Rushman was a false identity that was once forced upon the Black Widow, as seen in Marvel Team-Up #82ron.com/marvel-teamup-1970s/marvel-team-up-82.
Topical References
Lottie Hederman states here that her parents were killed in the Holocaust. As the Sliding Timescale pushes forward it becomes increasingly impossible for her to be this closely associated with World War II without some means of artificially extending her life span. See below for my theories on this.
Herve’s bedroom is depicted as having a computer with a CRT monitor. This should be considered topical as this technology is obsolete.
The Problem with Lottie
In this story, the Black Widow — posing as Lottie Hederman — states that Lottie’s parents were killed in the Holocaust. Later on, in issue #519, its revealed that Lottie is actually a Nazi war criminal who fled to America under an assumed alias. At the time this story was published in 1997, this would have been possible. However, as the Sliding Timescale pushes the Modern Age of the Marvel Universe forward in time, it becomes increasingly impossible for Lottie Hederman to have any direct ties to World War II without some means of artificially extending her lifespan. As of this writing (June, 2022), most people who were alive during World War II are now in their 90s.
Marvel has yet to provide an explanation regarding Lottie, and suspect they will ever will. Freedomslight only gets a passing mention in the Black Widow’s profile in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #1.
At least for the story above, “Lottie’s” statement that her parents died in the Holocaust should be considered topical. Regardless of how the Sliding Timescale will affect the character, Lottie Hederman is a false identity anyway. As such, I think it’s safe to assume that in order to conform to the advancement of time, “Lottie” would state that she is descended from Holocaust victims as opposed to being directly related to any.
I’ll get into the idea of Lottie being a Nazi war criminal when the subject is brought up in Journey into Mystery #519. Got to find something to keep you people reading.
