Painkiller Jane
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Painkiller Jane is a fictional character, a comic book heroine created by Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada for Event Comics in 1995. Originally a 5-issue miniseries, the character went on to star in numerous cross-over titles with the likes of The Punisher, Vampirella, and Hellboy. Recently the series relaunched at Dynamite Entertainment with the first issue selling out.
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[edit] Fictional character history
Jane Vasko begins as an undercover police officer attempting to infiltrate the Fonti Mob. After gaining the trust of mob boss Joey Fonti, she is given the assignment of passing a message on to rival gang member Adam, not realizing that an explosive device has been planted on her. As she meets her target, the explosion causes significant injuries, but Adam is uninjured. Through mysterious means, he manages to revive Jane, giving her superhuman regenerative powers in the process. Leaving her life as a police officer behind, she becomes the vigilante Painkiller Jane.
[edit] Powers and abilities
Jane Vasko is virtually indestructible, making her very hard to kill. With Jane's exceptional recuperative abilities, minor injuries heal in seconds, and do not even slow her down; more major ones tend to take a few minutes. She has recovered from multiple gunshot wounds, explosions, axes buried in her spine, even a shotgun to the face (which simply knocked her off her feet for a bit). However, the healing power does not stop the injuries from hurting, which is where her new name came from. Given her new profession, Jane tends to get hurt a lot. On the offensive side, she has no real powers except being a tough woman to kill. Other than that, she is a skilled fighter and master of undefined martial arts, as well as a master marksman with her weapons of choice, a pair of handguns.
[edit] Movie
Painkiller Jane was made into a made-for-television movie and broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel in December 2005. The film stars Emmanuelle Vaugier as the titular heroine. The film took significant liberties with the character's origin.
A Special Forces unit, known as the Painkiller Unit, is exposed to a biochemical weapon while on a mission in Sovetskaia, Chechnya. After attempting to retreat, the entire unit is ambushed and executed by a group of armed men in protective hazmat suits. One member of the unit, Captain Jane Browning (Emmanuelle Vaugier), not only survives the execution, but recovers from the viral infection, and develops an abnormally rapid healing factor, increased dexterity, speed, strength, enhanced senses, mental abilities and a photographic memory. Her eyes enlarge to take in and process information at a hypernormal rate, and her mind reorganizes what she has seen into analytical logic, such as plotting out a chess game and recognizing patterns in the type of a magazine article.
She is taken to a US Army laboratory where scientists are trying to learn what happened so they can create an army of supersoldiers. The lead scientist who is helping to find out why she survived and changed when the others died is Dr. Graham Knight. She is told by Col. Ian Watts, her mentor, that the virus was created by a biochemical terrorist named Peter Erfan who has a genius IQ. As the US Army is transferring her to another base in Alaska, Knight passes her a note saying that they are never going to let her go. Jane escapes in an effort to find Peter Erfan and gain revenge on him for murdering her team. She goes to the university for help from Dr. Knight, but finds that Dr. Knight is not the man who was working with her at the army base.
As she confronts him at his hotel, he reveals that he is Lucas Hensley and is with military intelligence. He is undercover and investigating her superior officer, Col. Ian Watts. Hensley tells her that Watts created Erfan and used him as the perfect cover. Since Erfan didn't exist then he couldn't be caught. Hensley asks Jane to help catch him. She goes to confront Watts herself, but as she does so, they are both shot by an unknown assassin. As she is trying to contain the bleeding on Watts, some of her blood falls into his wound and mixes with his blood.
She goes after the shooter and he leads her to Lucas Hensley. Hensley admits that he is in fact Peter Erfan and has a vial of liquid which he has extracted from Jane. As he is talking with her the assassin starts to move in on her and she shoots him. Erfan refers to her as the new Eve, as something in her body altered the virus and then the virus changed her. This is why she survived but the rest of her unit did not. Erfan has been able to recreate this modified virus and already gave it to the assassin. As he is talking with her the assassin that was shot gets up and rips off a power box on the wall and hits Jane in the head with it.
The next scene Erfan has her handcuffed in a helicopter and is taking her away. She breaks out of the handcuffs and starts fighting with Erfan. Shots are fired into the console of the helicopter and the assassin, who is piloting, loses control of the helicopter. This causes Erfan and Jane to fall out of the helicopter and they wrestle with each other while falling toward the water below. The next scene sees Col. Watts in a graveyard where he is standing over her tombstone. He then goes to the docks and gets on a boat. There he meets Jane and gives her a new identity and money. She sails off in the boat.
The final scene sees a group of Asian gentlemen walking into a laboratory and meet Erfan who survived the fall. His pupils enlarge, just the same as Jane's do, showing that he has been changed and has the same abilities as Jane.
The 2-hour movie was a backdoor pilot for a possible television series. As of July 14, 2006, based on the strong ratings of the movie/pilot and successful repeat showings, Sci-Fi Channel has greenlit the series for 22 one-hour episodes beginning April 13th, 2007 starring Kristanna Loken as Painkiller Jane.
[edit] TV Series
There is a Sci-Fi Channel Original Series based on the character starring Kristanna Loken that will start airing Friday, April 13th 2007 at 10pm.
[edit] Publishing History
- 22 Brides vol.1 #1-4
- Painkiller Jane vol.1 #0-5
- Painkiller Jane vol.2 #1-3
- Painkiller Jame vol.3 #0-present
Crossovers
- Punisher/Painkiller Jane #1
- Painkiller Jane/Hellboy #1
- Painkiller Jane/Darkchylde#1
- Vampirella/Painkiller Jane #1
- Painkiller Jane Vs. Darkness #1
- Ash/22 Brides #1-2
