Gail, I've developed a deep interest in Jeanette here recently. Can you point me to GOOD sources for her backstory, preferably CBR files I can look at so I can learn all about her?

I hate to say this but I honestly don’t know what CBR files are, is that from Comic Book Resources?

The only truly reliable info is in the comic or from my own fingers, but I am sure there is good stuff out there.

Basically, Jeannette is a banshee. She can smell death or NEAR death before it happens. She has a cry that unleashes the agony of her execution (by axe) on anyone who hears it. Because it’s a psychic assault, it is effective even against the most powerful meta-humans, and once took down even Wonder Woman.

She has enhanced strength, she can easily lift a car, but is unlikely to show such prowess as she finds it a bit show-offy. She heals quickly and is highly resistant to physical pain.

She seems to be caught somewhere between life and death. Her body temperature is low, but not the room temperature of a cadaver.

What makes her history unique is that she has lived many lives. She is always killed the same way, decapitated when betrayed by a lover. After that occurs, she is reborn as a baby, and she forgets her previous lives for many, many years. She has been shown in canon to have lived in Ireland during the Iron Age, and in Hungary, where she eventually became a handmaiden of the notorious Countess Erzsebet Bathory. After witnessing (and being forced to participate in) Bathory’s murderous whims, Jeannette took over her care in house arrest, and slowly murdered the countess with ground glass in her food. It has been discussed in the book, but not shown, that Jeannette also survived the Russian gulags, at the same Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was incarcerated.

During that time, she was imprisoned with Scandal Savage, and the two were briefly lovers.

It was also shown that she had been imprisoned at Kilmainham Gaol, during the Rising, and had suffered horrible abuse at that time.

The pattern of her life is always the same.

She is born, she matures, she falls in love, and on the night she marries, she remembers her past lives, including her deaths. No matter what she does to try to break the cycle, she is inevitably betrayed by her lover, and eventually, is decapitated. Because she remembers the terror of each death, even the suggestion of decapitation can cause her to faint or weep.

She carries a scar around her neck, which she hides with a choker. She carried definite physical connections to Superman foe THE SILVER BANSHEE but that connection has not been explored in canon.

Hope that helps!