Casper and the Spectrals

Casper and the Spectrals
Casper and the Spectrals #1
Publication information
Publisher	Arden Entertainment
Publication date	October 1, 2009 – September 1, 2010
No. of issues	3
Main character(s)	Casper Wendy Hot Stuff
Creative team
Written by	Todd Dezago
Artist(s)	Pedro Delgado
Penciller(s)	Pedro Delgado
Colorist(s)	Kieran Oats

Casper and the Spectrals is a three-issue comic book miniseries published by Arden Entertainment, celebrating the 60th anniversary of Casper the Friendly Ghost.

The series, which is a reimagining, gives the characters a modernized look and design while living in a grittier environment. The story follows Casper as he joins forces with Wendy the Good Little Witch and Hot Stuff the Little Devil to stop a monstrous threat named Willem Georges Volbragg. The issues were published from October 2009 to September 2010.

Plot

In the town of New York City, a young ghost named Casper and his cousin Spooky are getting lessons from their uncles, the Ghostly Trio (Lazo, Fusso and Fatso), as they demonstrate by scaring a local family on the subway train. However, Casper doesn't understand why, so in a school of Spookytown, the Trio inform him that they must keep the scares in Ghostburg intact in order to keep the monstrous entity, Volbragg, contained. Casper assumes that he is a myth, but the Trio tell him and Spooky the story of Willem Georges Volbragg, a tyrannical politician from the 1600s who wanted to rule New Amsterdam and terrorize the townspeople, but they had him sink to the bottom of the river, leaving him for dead. Volbragg then ended up in Spookytown (where he became a demon) and decided to take it over instead, which gives him this massive power by a witch that was able to use the magic spells to collect the scares in Spookytown that is converted into an energy source in order to make him bigger and more powerful and would destroy any race that has the least scares. This led the more intelligent ghosts and witches to start a plan to capture Volbragg and use his scare power to collect scares, sending him into prison and must continue channeling the scare energy to keep him contained.

Upset, Casper decides to fly around Spookytown while thinking of another way to keep Volbragg contained instead of scaring humans. He looks at other races of monsters and stumbles upon a group of witches terrorizing humans, until a young witch named Wendy interrupts, as she is not pleased with her aunts scaring others for their amusement, even though they explain to her that they must keep Volbragg contained. She has all the humans disappear except for a young boy, whom Casper unintentionally scares off and leads back home, leading him to meet Wendy who thanks him for his help. Seeing how she similar is to him, Casper befriends Wendy, and they spend time socializing and learning about one another.

One day in Deviland, they meet a trouble-making young devil named Hot Stuff who pulls a prank on a group of ogres and has Casper and Wendy take the blame, where the ogres have captured them in a net that is immune to their powers. Hot Stuff decides to save them by pretending to be a mud monster and demands the ogres to let them go before entrapping them with their net. After escaping from the ogres, Casper and Wendy offer Hot Stuff to join them, which he reluctantly agrees to since he can relate to the idea of not being wanted. With Hot Stuff as their new friend, Casper and Wendy decides to show Hot Stuff around teaching him how to be nice as Hot Stuff shows them his race of demons. The three encounter a werewolf, who threatens to eat Hot Stuff. Although Casper tries scaring the werewolf, he is not intimidated by him and finds his attempt to scare him amusing.

The trio escapes and goes to their treehouse hideout, where they are caught and punished by their furious elders and are forbidden to see each other again. Meanwhile, two scientists, Professor Phineas Field and his assistant, Eloise “Ellie” Essex, attempt to learn about the other world and collect its energy source, but the machine they use takes away their energy and lets the loose ghosts, ghouls, and goblins for terrorizing their world and weakening the prison's hold that contained Volbragg, which causes him to break free and go on a rampage to rule all of Spookytown. Casper, Wendy, and Hot Stuff reunite and witness the chaos as many ghosts and ghouls flee from the monstrous beast. Casper believes that he is lonely and all he wanted was to be accepted, but Wendy and Hot Stuff think that he has lost his mind, leading to an argument between Casper and Wendy that ends their friendship and leaves Hot Stuff on his own. Hot Stuff then runs into the scientists, who tell him what had happened and tried to stop it, but they can't. Hot Stuff then flies off to find Casper and Wendy. Meanwhile, Wendy finds the witch that gave Volbragg the magic spells who then, in turn, gives Wendy her old wand that can take his magic away. Casper goes to Volbragg thinking that he can try to reason with him, but is interrupted by Hot Stuff and Wendy, leading Volbragg to think that Casper is setting him up.

The trio goes to the scientists' lab, where they reveal that Volbragg is getting his energy from the electricity from the human world. With that being said, Casper insists on using dampening dust Phineas gave him to cope with Volbragg while Wendy uses the wand the witch gave her to take Volbragg, but he proves to be too powerful. Hot Stuff arrives and uses balloons as fake ghosts (which he used to trick the ogres) to distract Volbragg as he loses power, which gives Wendy the opportunity to use the wand against him. It turns out that Volbragg has the power of being part ghost, part witch, and part devil, as Wendy has to say three phrases three times to use the magic and take away his powers, causing the building they are in to collapse. Just as a large piece of debris is about to fall onto Wendy, Hot Stuff sacrifices himself by pushing her out of the way.

With Volbragg dead, everyone in Spookytown mourns Hot Stuff's death, but his parents reveal that the only way to revive Hot Stuff is by putting him in a lava pit. Hot Stuff then rises up from the pit, and everyone cheers and congratulates Casper and his friends, giving Hot Stuff the idea of having a party to celebrate, as it is the friendship of the three that work together to kill Volbragg for good.

Characters

Main characters

• Casper – a young ghost who instead of scaring others like all the other ghosts, wants to be friendly around humans. He befriends Wendy and Hot Stuff as they work together to stop Volbragg.
• Wendy – a good-natured young witch who acknowledges the need to scare others, though she has her limits, and uses her magic to send humans back to their homes once they've been scared. She befriends Casper and Hot Stuff seeing that she can easily relate to them. With her magic spells, she uses them in an effort to stop Volbragg.
• Hot Stuff – a young devil who is the more trouble-making of the three, but when he befriends Casper and Wendy, he becomes nicer and more helpful when the others need him.

Supporting characters

• The Ghostly Trio - Casper and Spooky's uncles and teachers who always resent their nephew's nice attitude, and are willing to keep all the scares just to keep Volbragg in his prison.
• Spooky - Casper's cousin who is the exact opposite in that he admires scaring humans.
• Wendy's aunts - Wendy's three aunts who admire scaring humans, but also try to keep Volbragg from escaping.
• Hot Stuff's family - a family of devils that consists of Hot Stuff's mother, father, and older brother.
• Professor Phineas Field - a human scientist who intends on collecting energy from other worlds, but accidentally causes a probe between Spookytown and the real world as well as Volbragg's escape from prison.
• Eloise "Ellie" Essex - Professor Field's intern and lab assistant.

Antagonists

• Willem Georges Volbragg - the main antagonist of the miniseries. He is a tyrannical politician demon who was once human and wanted to take over New Amsterdam. When that fails, he seeks his intentions on Spookytown by collecting all the scares to become more powerful and feared. A mixture of three monsters, Volbragg was so powerful because he was part Devil, part Ghost, and part Warlock. but his scare collect was used as a prison in order to keep him contained. Some ghosts and witches managed to trap Volbragg in a scare-powered prison, therefore keeping Volbragg trapped in as along as all boroughs scare enough humans to keep the prison powered up. Volbragg created a sphere that could harness the energy generated by scaring humans in order to grow more powerful. The main trouble was partly caused by a human scientist, who discovers Spookytown and wishes to harness its power, but ends up freeing Volbragg this way. Volbragg sought power so badly because he wanted people to like him.