The story so far: Wanda Magnatova arrived at Exhampton Academy and discovered that it wasn't like other prestigious boarding schools. Her roommate Josie had been sitting in front of a computer for days designing circuitry, and over at the science building, her classmates were working on beam weaponry, sentient robots and dimensional warps. Her tour guide asked what she was there to work on, and Wanda said she didn't know — all she knew was that her father, Professor Magnat, ran the program. She quickly became friends with most of her classmates. One exception was Blake Olson, who was wrapped up in a feud with some football players who had attacked him a year before. So when he accidentally rescued a 1500-year-old barbarian from a hell dimension, he immediately sicced his new musclebound friend on the football team. The plan backfired. The team put Blake in the hospital, and the only thing that stopped the barbarian from going on a killing spree was the timely intervention of classmate Tony Fujikawa and his concussion cannon. Unbeknownst to Blake, Thunar the barbarian was accompanied by his brother, the powerful and cunning warlock Loki. Loki contrived to stay on Earth by taking over the body of a robot, Ultramax, that student Pieter Pimm was building. Finding a much more sophisticated robot on the premises, Loki left Ultramax's body to Thunar, who predictably went berserk. Unfortunately, Wanda's roommate Josie was nearby, and Ultramax left her a quadriplegic. Wanda probably would have been killed herself had Professor Magnat not appeared and telekinetically disassembled Ultramax. It was then that she learned that Magnat had engineered her upbringing to make her perfectly suited to become a telekinetic herself, and gave her a device to channel her powers. Wanda, however, gave the device to Josie, who used it to help overcome her paralysis. A relatively happy ending, except for the fact that Loki is still on the loose... The cast: Magnat Program students Wanda Magnatova, 16, was born in the Balkans but was very early on placed in the care of a strict governess in the Czech Republic. As a foreign student with a cloistered upbringing, Wanda is a bit of an outsider but has still made a number of friends at Exhampton. She was raised to be a telekinetic, but it didn't quite take: instead, she has the power to destroy small objects with a thought. Tony Fujikawa, also 16, is an engineering genius who hails from Seattle and works on advanced weaponry. He has a number of projects going, the most successful of which so far is an arm-mounted "concussive cannon" that can forcefully repel objects without destroying them. He has also used the same technology to build himself a jetpack of sorts. Having spent his life surrounded by people even geekier than he, Tony is under the impression that he is cool and that chicks dig him. Pieter Pimm, 17, is a robotics expert but is technically no longer in the Magnat Program. For over a year he worked on a robot he called "Ultramax," but the project went nowhere and Pieter was convinced he would soon be drummed out of the program and sent home to Amsterdam in disgrace. Through no doing of Pieter's, Ultramax actually became sentient for a time, but then turned violent, making Pieter even more morose than before, if such a thing is possible. His current whereabouts are unknown, but he was last seen in the company of a much more advanced robot created by his faculty advisor. Blake Olson, 16, is also no longer in the Magnat Program. Once a prodigy in the field of transdimensional physics, Blake tapped into a hell dimension and accidentally brought to Earth the 1500-year-old barbarian Thunar; he then ordered Thunar to attack the football team, with whom Blake had a feud dating back to his first day at Exhampton. The team took its revenge on Blake, beating him badly enough that he ended up in the hospital. To add insult to injury, the warlock Loki stole his quantitative reasoning skills, rendering him incapable of doing math or science. Blake currently lives in Philadelphia. Josie Blackrock, 17, is an electronics genius who made the mistake of breaking into the Exhampton chemistry lab while Ultramax was on a rampage. Though the robot broke her neck and rendered her a quadriplegic, her roommate Wanda gave her a device that allowed her to use her prodigious powers of concentration to move metal objects about telekinetically. Now wearing a web of metal tape that she can mentally manipulate, Josie can once again move around and even fly — but she has left Exhampton and is presumably back home in South Dakota. Other Exhampton students Claire Vanderline, 15, is the only child of billionaire Ted Vanderline, owner of the Vanderline chain of luxury hotels. Her friends agree that she acts much less spoiled nowadays than she did when she first arrived at Exhampton. In this case they're right, but Claire's friends don't know everything about her; they have no idea, for instance, that every month or so she goes, not to her home in Connecticut, but to New York to seduce an older man just for the thrill of the hunt. Pieter is infatuated with her, but Claire has no idea. Her attentions are elsewhere. Jenna Walcott is also 15 and is Claire's suitemate. She is bookish, mousy, overweight, easily scandalized, and used to being treated as if she weren't there. She is secretly amazed that someone like Claire treats her as a friend. The two of them live across the hall from Wanda. Simon Fisher, who is 15 as well though he still receives children's menus at restaurants, is enough of a nerd that he would undoubtedly wear a bow tie if Exhampton's school uniform policy didn't dictate otherwise. Wanda's tour guide her first day at the Academy, he loves to go on about the Magnat Program, though he himself is only a middling student and has no more chance of being a Magnat student than of being a professional basketball player. Jim Rose is Tony's suitemate, a running back from South Carolina who is at Exhampton on an athletic scholarship. Though he and Tony would seem to have little in common, they're actually pretty good friends; as a star athlete, Jim is accustomed to people angling to become his hangers-on should he someday make the NFL, and so he finds it refreshing to be around someone who's trying to carve out his own fortune in a very different arena. Bart Clinton is captain of the Exhampton football team and an Olympic-level archer. After the house he lived in was trashed by Thunar the barbarian, he wound up in temporary housing and finally got reassigned to Xavier Hall, the same building where Wanda, Tony, Jim, Jenna and Claire all live. Natalie Rome has also recently been reassigned to Xavier Hall; once Bart's girlfriend — or at least frequent bedmate — she has been rather sweet on Tony after he helped to save her from Thunar's rampage. Exhampton faculty Professor Erich Magnat is the founder of the Magnat Program at Exhampton Academy, whose mission is to bring together the geniuses at the very tip of the bell curve and pair them with Nobel-quality scientists to help them "smash through the ceiling of human capability." Magnat himself has developed a device to unlock the brain's capacity for telekinesis; sadly, he tested an early prototype on himself, and is consequently dying of brain cancer. Professor Richard Russell was Blake Olson's faculty advisor. He is the world's leading expert on transdimensional physics. Professor Charles Lucas, from Liberia, is Tony's faculty advisor and one of the premier inventors of his generation. Perhaps best known for a device that miniaturizes objects in an eyeblink (though leaving them slightly unstable), Lucas recently turned to metallurgy and developed a shock-absorbing compound that Tony has incorporated into his current project. Professor Ben Greenberg is one of the newest members of the Exhampton faculty. A chemist known for his work in adhesives, he has no Magnat students yet but is working with a couple of postdoctoral students. John Cater is one of Greenberg's postdocs. Andrew Frederiksen is the other. Professor Thomas Rey was Pieter's faculty advisor, and developed an exquisitely crafted robot he called "David." Tragically, David was possessed by the warlock Loki, and accidentally killed Rey trying to magically extract information from his brain. Gerald Ford is the headmaster of Exhampton Academy. His interaction with the Exhampton students has thus far been limited to disciplining Blake for posting off-color screeds against the football team around campus and to kicking Pieter out of the program after Rey's death. Cooper Duval, Esq., is the student advocate at Exhampton, a sort of defense attorney for students facing the disciplinary committee. Others Thunar was a barbarian who first lived approximately 1500 years ago. Sent to a hell dimension by a wizard, he was accidentally brought to Earth by Blake Olson, who ordered him to attack the football team. Thunar went on a berserker rampage and destroyed the dorm that housed many of the football players before being driven away by Tony Fujikawa. Ultramax was a robot developed by Pieter Pimm. Though Ultramax was a failure with nothing close to true artificial intelligence, the warlock Loki cast a spell that tapped his brother Thunar's strength to allow the two of them to possess Ultramax's body. When Loki abandoned the body, Thunar again went on a spree of violence, but was destroyed by Professor Magnat. David is a robot designed by Professor Rey and currently possessed by the warlock Loki. Loki killed Rey attempting to tap into his brain, and subsequently enlisted Pieter's help in whatever nefarious scheme he might currently be planning. This guy has only appeared briefly, but you have to think he's probably a villain, right? Return to the Comics page!