Jeannette (comics)

Jeannette was introduced in the fourth issue of the ongoing Secret Six comic book as the sixth—and most recent—addition to the team, whose roster had changed many times since its inception.

Jeannette is a banshee who was born into a family of impoverished nobility. As a child, she was sent to serve Elizabeth Báthory and forced to watch Báthory's murders with the intent of being her final victim. When Báthory was imprisoned, Jeannette was assigned to care for her. She used the position to slowly murder Báthory by placing ground glass in her food.

As an adult she became a wealthy married socialite. However, her husband betrayed her to the Revolution and caused Jeannette to become the victim of a botched execution, which led to her mortal death. She describes the ordeal as follows:

The executioner was drunk. I paid him with the only jewelry they let me keep. Mother's necklace. His ax was...imprecise. The first blow cracked the bones in my left shoulder. The white dress I wore soaked red with my blood. With each missed killing stroke, the crowd cheered and laughed. For them it was good sport. For me it was pain and terror so deep that I lost everything I was. To kneel, bound at the hands, in my befouled undergarments, and know the butcher wasn't finished. There were three more misses. He stopped after the third blow, for a drink of water, and to pantomime his fatigue for the crowd. Swinging the axe was tiring, you see. That was his excuse. The child I was born, for all the things she had done...she left me as I waited to die. And I found the Banshee.^[1]

In her first appearance several centuries later, Jeannette is shown to run a casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.^[2] Her status as a villain was not made explicit, but due to her apparent relationship with her soon-to-be teammate Scandal Savage, it is implied that she had engaged in unsavory business prior to her introduction. Eventually, she is shown to have been detained in several prisons over the course of her life for unspecified crimes.^[3]

Jeannette displays an immediate attraction to teammate Deadshot, and the two begin an affair. At one point, Deadshot injures Jeannette in an apparent betrayal of the team,^[4] but this turns out to be a necessary act in order to save them. Their relationship suffers another blow later, when Deadshot shoots Jeannette after she threatens to break a contract the team has entered into with a group of slavers by rescuing the imprisoned Artemis, whom she is shown to have met previously.^[3] According to creator Gail Simone, "Jeannette was so busy doing Deadshot all the time, people forgot she's bi!"^[5]