Unlike some of her fellow superheroes, Bubbly Blonde's incredible gymnastic skills are not the result of hours of intense training, though she certainly has done her share.  From the time she was very young, Jan seemed to have an inborn natural -- if undeveloped -- talent for acrobatics.  Since becoming Wander Woman's protégé, she has developed these skills, even to the point of making her friend Adventure Girl's own incredible skills look like those of a rank amateur.

In addition to her acrobatic skills, Jan has been training intensely with Wander Woman in the art of hand-to-hand combat.  While nowhere near the skill level of her Amazonian mentor yet, she is more than capable of handling herself in a fight.  She has also been trained in the use of various types of weapons -- everything from a simple staff to a sword.

Jan carries a little plastic "ray gun" that, when filled with soapy water, will emit a stream of large clear bubbles.  The gun serves no real purpose in combat outside of the occasional distraction, but has quickly become her trademark.
 

By the time she'd met Wander Woman for the first time, Janice Riley had already taken on most of the known super-villains in Hub City, rescued the Justice Friends at least four times, helped repel two attempted alien invasions -- one single-handedly -- and stopped an impossible to count number of small-time bank robberies, muggings and the like, all from the comfort of her small bedroom, while wearing a Pepe LePew sleep-shirt.

Yes, to say Jan had an overactive imagination would be an understatement.

In her private fantasies, Jan was always the hero, saving the world time and time again with feats that earned her the thanks and admiration of everyone in Hub City.  Unfortunately, reality wasn't as kind. 

After her mother died when she was born, Jan was raised by her father in a quiet middle-class neighborhood on the edge of the city limits.  Don Riley provided a good life for himself and his daughter.  Unfortunately, his job required him to make frequent trips out of town, meaning that a lot of Jan's early years were spent in the care of a variety of babysitters, a situation that didn't help her in the realm of high school peer pressure, where any "abnormality" was enough to get someone branded an outcast.

Not that Jan didn't try to fit in, sometimes going out of her way to try and make friends with members of the in-crowd at school, only to have those overtures used to further illustrate how desperate she was to "belong".  Never one to give up easily, however, Jan would just try harder, which is why she decided to try out for the cheerleading squad.

From the time she was very small, Jan had always had a natural talent for acrobatic, able to do flips and leaps that would have been difficult for even some of the most advanced Olympians.  Never having a yen to compete in gymnastics, she hadn't gone out for the team.  But, she figured, it would be just the thing to give her a leg up on becoming a cheerleader.  In an effort to show how much she wanted to make the cut, she even went so far as to make her own uniform to wear at the try-outs, adding one of her favorite toys -- a plastic bubble-blowing gun -- as a prop.  None of it mattered, however, as Jan never got a chance to show her stuff, being rejected out-of-hand by the current group of stuck-up girls on the team.

It was coming home from this latest disappointment -- still wearing her homemade cheerleader costume -- that Jan's life took a turn that would change it forever.  Taking a shortcut behind a local jewelry store, she stumbled onto a battle between Wander Woman and Gem Stone -- a battle that Wander Woman was very close to losing. 

Maybe it was the fact that she was tired of being pushed around, but Jan refused to stand idly by and watch the heroine's defeat, and to her own surprise -- and no doubt to Gem's as well -- she not only held her own in the fight, but actually managed to capture Gem and rescue Wander Woman.  In thanks, the Amazon took the newly dubbed Bubbly Blonde under her wing, agreeing to train her in the arts of combat. 

All her life, Jan had fantasized about being a superhero, so for her, this was a dream come true.  But you know what they say: "Be careful what you wish for."