The story so far: Wanda Magnatova arrived at Exhampton Academy and discovered that it wasn't like other prestigious boarding schools: several of her classmates were in the exclusive "Magnat Program," working on beam weaponry, dimensional warps and sentient robots. One such robot, possessed by a 1500-year-old barbarian (long story), severely injured her roommate Josie, who left school. Wanda was then assigned a new roommate, Robin. Later that day, Robin was possessed by a demon. Wanda has bad luck with roommates. This demon menaced several people, then ran off to pay homage to a robot possessed by the 1500-year-old warlock Loki (longer story). But immediately upon finding him, the demon was fried by a bolt from above, the work of a self-proclaimed angel named Alibeca Juarez. Everyone who had encountered the demon gathered in the Xavier Hall student lounge, where Alibeca tried to convince them to help her in her battle against Pandemonio, master of these dark creatures. Some said yes. Some said no. Wanda is still deciding... The cast: Encountered the demon Alibeca Juarez has encountered many demons and lived to tell the tale. Though perhaps "lived" is the wrong word: she claims to have been transformed into an angel after touching a Zia sun symbol she found in the sacristry of the church in New Mexico where she worked. This symbol, now imprinted upon her right palm, has given her the ability to fly, to produce bursts of light, and to turn demons to ash. She appears to find the use of these powers quite pleasurable, but also hard to remember. Dave is a robot currently possessed by the warlock Loki. Having conquered a big chunk of Europe back in the Dark Ages before being sent to a hell dimension for 1500 years, he aims to repeat his success in the present. And getting his hands on the Zia weapon Alibeca wears, known to Dave as the Sun Talisman, seems like the most promising path to world domination. Wanda Magnatova 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 is a genius inventor 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 agreed to lend his engineering prowess to the fight against the demons. Bart Clinton is the captain of the Exhampton football team, an Olympic-level archer, and another recruit to the demon-hunting cause. He and Tony have an ongoing feud over... ...Natalie Rome, who slept with Bart in the not too distant past but who has been spending all her time with Tony after he saved her from a Viking rampage. She turned down the offer to join the demon hunters. Jim Rose, Tony's roommate, also turned down the offer. A running back from South Carolina who is at Exhampton on an athletic scholarship, he and Tony would seem to have little in common but are actually pretty good friends. Claire Vanderline is the only child of billionaire Ted Vanderline, owner of the Vanderline chain of luxury hotels. She has volunteered to join the fight against the demons, though unlike Wanda, Tony, and Bart, she lacks a special ability that might be of use in the effort. Jenna Walcott is Claire's roommate. She is bookish, mousy, overweight, easily scandalized, and secretly amazed that someone like Claire treats her as a friend. She wants nothing at all to do with the demons and was the first person to back out. Mr. Awky is Dave's parrot, recently acquired from an Exhampton pet shop and undoubtedly severely traumatized by subsequent events. Others Pieter Pimm is an Exhampton student who spent over a year working on a robot he called Ultramax. Ultramax served as a host body for Loki before the warlock moved on to the body of a more advanced robot created by Pieter's faculty advisor; consequently, Pieter and Loki (now calling himself Dave the Robot) have developed something of a partnership. Simon Fisher was Wanda's tour guide her first day at the Academy. He loves to go on about the Magnat Program and the prodigies who populate it, though he himself is only a middling student and is not involved with the program at all. Gerald Ford is the headmaster of Exhampton Academy. He is also administering the Magnat Program on an interim basis, owing to the terminal illness of... Erich Magnat, founder of the program, 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." Simon was stunned to discover that Magnat himself would be Wanda's faculty advisor, only to learn that he was also her father. 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. Return to the Comics page!