The story so far: Wanda Magnatova arrived at Exhampton Academy and discovered that it wasn't like other prestigious boarding schools. Her classmates were working on beam weaponry, sentient robots and dimensional warps. Wanda was no science prodigy. But she soon learned she had impressive mental powers of her own. One of her classmates, Blake Olson, accidentally rescued a 1500-year-old barbarian from a hell dimension and 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, 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 named David that one of the professors had built. He remains at large. At one point, Blake encountered a flock of buzzard-like demons. These turned out to have been summoned by a mysterious figure named Pandemonio, who inhabited a cave in Arizona. After several centuries in the desert — or so he said — he was chased away by his nemesis, a self-proclaimed angel named Alibeca Juarez. Now, wherever could he have gone...? 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 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. 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 is now apparently involved with Tony, who helped to save her from Thunar's rampage. Others David is a robot designed by Professor Thomas 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. Demons have been spotted both on the Exhampton campus and in the Arizona desert. They seem to be under the control of... Pandemonio, who possesses an amulet that allows him to summon demons and to teleport. He claims to be at least 500 years old. Alibeca Juarez has battled Pandemonio and lived to tell the tale. Claiming to be an angel, Alibeca has demonstrated 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. Saint is here to stop the Vietnam War. Return to the Comics page!