BIOGRAPHY - Page 1
Jessan Hoan was born and raised in the bustling island-nation of Singapore. Following in the footsteps of her banker family, Jessan attended the prestigious Harvard Business School—from which she graduated magna cum laude—and began working in her family's bank in Singapore shortly thereafter. Although the Hoan Family Bank was far from the largest bank in Singapore, it was quite successful—which, unfortunately, made it a target for a marauding group of cybernetic pirates called the Reavers. Jessan was working at the bank the day the Reavers ambushed it and began slaughtering everyone in sight. Jessan, however, they spared, as they had another use for her. When Jessan informed the Reavers that their intrusion activated the security locks on the vault, rendering its contents inaccessible to them, they executed her uncle and took her with them back to their HQ in the Australian Outback.
Upon arriving in Australia, Jessan learned from the Reaver called Pretty Boy that they intended to use her banking expertise to oversee the financial arm of their pirating operation. However, some of her other virtues—such as her sense of morality, her scruples and her decency—they considered liabilities that needed to be expunged. Using cybernetic filaments that linked his mind with hers, Pretty Boy began to reprogram Jessan's mind to his liking. Fortunately for Jessan, partway through this psychic violation, the X-Men arrived and confronted the Reavers, saving the innocent banker from complete reconstruction. After Wolverine and the X-Men disposed of the Reavers, their ally, the Goddess Roma, agreed to return Jessan to the exact time and place from which she was kidnapped. Jessan arrived home in the ruins of her family's bank, the only of the bank's officers to survive the attack and, as she would soon discover, no longer fully herself. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #229, Marvel Comics Presents (1st series) #6]
Once back in Singapore, Jessan discovered that her survival of the massacre at the bank made her a pariah not only within her extended family, but within the entire community as well. Whereas she once cared greatly about her reputation, she discovered this no longer concerned her. Moving on with her life, Jessan sought work in other banks, but found none of them would hire her. Curious, she began investigating why the financial world had turned on her and why, of all the banks in Singapore, the Reavers had targeted her family's. She found this investigation surprisingly easy, as she quickly discovered that she now possessed new skills in computer hacking and hand-to-hand combat, courtesy of Pretty Boy's cybernetic download. It seemed his mental reprogramming had been partially successful: not only did he impart her with new abilities, but she was now more ruthless and less concerned with the moral implications of her actions.
Jessan's search led her to the Meridian Bank, one of the largest banks in Southeast Asia. She discovered that the Meridian, growing fearful of the competition posed by the Hoan Family Bank, had hired a crime lord named Roche to destroy it, while Roche, in turn, had contracted the job out 
to the Reavers. With the Reavers already eliminated, Jessan vowed to get vengeance on Roche. She traveled to his turf, the island nation of Madripoor, and started building a name for herself by attacking Roche's street-level thugs in Lowtown. She always left them with a message: Roche's days were numbered, as "the Tyger" was coming for him—a nod to a nickname the Reavers had given her. [Marvel Comics Presents (1st series) #6]
In addition to eliminating some of Roche's low-level operations, Jessan also became acquainted with the staff at the Princess Bar, the foremost hub of rumors and activity in Lowtown. When a man called Patch started snooping around for the Tyger on behalf of a dead associate, the staff at the Princess Bar grew suspicious. They notified the Tyger, and she began tailing Patch in Lowtown one evening. To her surprise, Patch's keen senses tipped him off to her presence. Not only did he manage to apprehend her, but somehow, he knew her true identity. Not realizing 
Patch was actually Wolverine, one of the X-Men who had once saved her life, Jessan resisted capture and managed to give Patch the slip through a combination of her fighting skills, hidden gadgets and ruthlessness. Upon escaping, she returned to the Princess Bar to discuss this turn of events with the club's owner, O'Donnell, at which point she learned that Patch had been taken captive by Roche, who was surely going to torture—and maybe even kill—him for information about "the Tyger." Jessan staked out Roche's compound in hopes of spotting an opportunity to free Wolverine, only to witness him escape on his own and get beaten and thrown over a waterfall by Roche's goon Razorfist. She followed his unconscious body out to sea and rescued him from the certain death of drowning, after which she nursed him back to health on one of her boats. [Marvel Comics Presents (1st series) #1-5]
Jessan was delighted when Patch recovered from his injuries and when she discovered his true identity. She told Wolverine she intended to destroy Roche and replace him as crime lord of Madripoor—and solicited his help in doing so. When he reminded her it was his duty fight criminals like her and Roche, she subtly reminded him that she he was honor bound to her, as she had saved his life. Reluctantly, Wolverine agreed to go along with her. Soon, however, Roche made an attempt on Jessan's life, and only Wolverine's quick thinking saved her. With their mutual debts canceled, she released him, but he decided to help her eliminate Roche anyway. Together, they invaded Roche's compound. While Wolverine battled Razorfist, Jessan singlehandedly defeated two of Roche's top goons, and even took care of Roche himself by nonchalantly lopping off his head with her sword. With him gone, the Tyger ascended to the top of Madripoor's criminal underworld.
In a subsequent conversation with Wolverine in her dressing room, Jessan reminded him of his duty to eliminate people in her position. He assured her he would—if she ever went down Roche's path. Jessan agreed to let him act as her external conscience, and sealed the arrangement with a blood pact between her and Logan. She could not think of a better man to watch her life, she said, and hoped she proved worthy of his friendship. As they embraced for a passionate kiss, she wondered if, in addition to saving her life and winning her heart, he might also save her soul. [Marvel Comics Presents (1st series) #6-10]
Roche's assassination opened the floodgates for several criminal factions to vie for control of Madripoor's criminal empire and, because Tyger Tiger was there first, she found herself having to defend her precarious position from the constant power grabs of other criminals trying to wrest control of the island. Despite the purging of her moral constraints, she still refused to deal in drugs or slaves, leaving those enterprises to her competition. Soon, another formidable player moved into Madripoor: General Coy Ngoc Manh, a Vietnamese refugee and uncle to the New Mutant known as Karma. Once in Madripoor, General Coy began expanding his network, using his profits from drug trafficking to gain influence with the Madripoor's ruler, Prince Raban. When the Prince's Chancellor gently suggested that the Prince defer to the Tyger's authority, Coy ordered his men, Bloodscream and Roughhouse, to assassinate him, and later sent them after Tyger Tiger and 
Wolverine. Although she fought well in battle, Tyger Tiger fell to the vampiric Bloodscream, who nearly drained her of her life force. Only the timely intervention of Coy's niece Karma saved her life. [Wolverine (2nd series) #4]
Wolverine's allies took the injured Jessan to the offices of Landau, Luckman and Lake so she could recover. While there, Chang lent them a flexible suit of armor that Wolverine had ordered for his associate Psylocke. They chose to put the armor on the unconscious Tyger Tiger—a wise move, considering that, shortly after arriving, Roughhouse ambushed them and destroyed the building, burying them in rubble. Roughhouse and Bloodscream took Jessan and her allies to the Prince's house to present them to General Coy. Coy was frustrated to discover, however, that neither he nor his henchmen could harm Tyger while she wore the armor. Before Coy discovered how to remove the armor, Wolverine infiltrated the manor and staged a rescue, and in the ensuing fight Jessan got even with Bloodscream. The Prince intervened, separated everyone and confined Jessan to a locked room. She still could not figure out how to remove her armor, but Wolverine arrived and removed it for her. He also laid out a new arrangement for her and the Prince of Madripoor: despite the atrocities the Prince and Coy had committed together, a stable alliance 
was preferable to a bloody turf war. The Prince feared that a single crime lord in Madripoor would rival his power, but two rival crime lords would serve as a check on each other. Further, since Tyger refused to deal in drugs or slaves, whereas Coy did, then the two of them could coexist separately while working in different markets. With this arrangement in place, the Prince decided to let Tyger Tiger live. He made her and Coy accept this territorial agreement, which Tyger did reluctantly. [Wolverine (2nd series) #5-7]