My Rating
“The Evolution”
Smoke from Senator Greene’s estate can be seen for miles across Washington, D.C. The Gatherers have torched the mansion in a desperate attempt to destroy evidence of their secret society—and eliminate every loose end still breathing inside the complex.
Sergeant Jim Duffy Jr. is chief among them.
Jim lies unconscious somewhere inside the burning structure as flames spread from room to room. Outside, firefighters from Engine Company 32 race toward the mansion. Axes slam repeatedly into the heavy wooden front doors as the crew desperately attempts to gain entry.
Inside, at least one person is still conscious enough to scream for help.
Time is running out.
London, England – 1648
Deep beneath the decrepit asylum that once imprisoned Kassandra Fey, Baron Winters and Merlin find themselves trapped inside a cellar filled with corpses.
The Baron repeatedly attempts to break through the door while Merlin provides his usual growling commentary. Unfortunately, Winters seems to have forgotten one rather important detail.
Simon Talman bricked up the other side.
Nobody is getting into—or out of—that cellar without explosives.
Or magic.
Magic it is.
Baron Winters needs a pentagram. Unfortunately, there isn’t exactly a seventeenth-century convenience store nearby where he can purchase a box of chalk.
Merlin growls.
The Baron scans the room.
Dead bodies are scattered everywhere.
A particularly sinister idea enters his mind.
Time to get to work!
Wintersgate Manor – 2012
A dying Simon Talman enters Wintersgate Manor through the front door. His physical body is rapidly failing, but that no longer matters. The Gatherers have given their centuries-old servant one final mission.
Search through time itself for the Dormants.
With Baron Winters trapped in 1648 and presumed dead, the countless temporal doorways hidden throughout Wintersgate Manor have been left unguarded. The Gatherers suddenly possess access to different periods of human history.
Their plan is horrifyingly simple.
Find the Dormants.
Impregnate them.
Create Generation Twelve.
Instead of waiting decades for carefully manipulated bloodlines to produce the desired offspring, the Gatherers can use Wintersgate’s portals to accelerate their breeding program one hundred-fold.
Talman starts climbing the manor’s winding staircase.
One step.
Two.
Three.
He doesn’t make it much farther.
The ancient serial killer collapses dead upon the stairs.
Then something erupts from his corpse.
Black shadows pour upward from Talman’s body before scattering through Wintersgate Manor. These aren’t ordinary spirits. They are the consumed souls of hundreds of Darkling babies, finally released from the monster who carried them.
Now they race through the hallways searching for open doorways into the past.
Baron Winters’ greatest weapon has just become the Gatherers’ supernatural highway.
Can Engine Company 32 reach Jim Duffy before Senator Greene’s mansion is completely engulfed in flames? Where are the Darklings headed? Can Baron Winters escape a sealed seventeenth-century dungeon using nothing but magic and whatever happens to be lying around?
And seriously, when was the last time Baron Winters performed manual labor?
Most importantly, where is Kassandra Fey going?
Collect the series to find out!
Reviewer Notes
This is it!
After five issues of clues, missing children, strange bloodlines, shadow creatures, time travel, Dormants, Darklings, Gatherers, and Baron Winters refusing to explain a damn thing, Wolfman finally pulls back the curtain.
The Gatherers’ plan is revealed, and the scope of this thing stretches across hundreds of years of human history.
Did you know George Washington was a Dormant possessing tremendous psychic potential?
Me either.
I’m deliberately going to avoid revealing too much here because this is one of those issues that works better when you discover the answers yourself. I’ll simply say that many of the seemingly disconnected clues from the previous five books finally begin fitting together. This is exactly why Marv Wolfman’s habit of dragging mysteries across multiple issues can be both frustrating and rewarding. He makes you wait forever—but occasionally the payoff is worth it.
For me, “The Evolution” is the best issue of Volume 3 so far.
Then we have Kassandra Fey.
Holy crap.
Kassandra is one badass witch—assuming “witch” is even the correct description for whatever she really is. Wolfman finally digs deeper into her history, including how she escapes London and eventually makes her way toward the New World. I’m not sure how her abilities would stack up against someone like DC’s Enchantress, but I know one thing.
She fucks up Barbados.
Baron Winters has spent three volumes acting like the smartest and most powerful person in every room he enters. He manipulates people, jumps through time, recruits disposable supernatural investigators, and generally behaves as though everything is unfolding according to some grand plan only he understands.
Kassandra Fey doesn’t seem particularly impressed.
For perhaps the first time in this volume, I genuinely feel like Baron Winters may have met his match.
The Essentials
The other thing I appreciate is how Wolfman finally makes Wintersgate Manor itself an essential part of the story. Those mysterious doors and corridors aren’t merely spooky decorations anymore. The manor’s ability to connect different points in time becomes central to the Gatherers’ plan. That is exactly the kind of mythology I wanted Wolfman to explore when I started Volume 3.
This is Night Force firing on all cylinders: horror, science fiction, history, witches, psychic bloodlines, time travel, monsters, and one pissed-off leopard.
I’m giving Night Force Vol. 3 #6 five out of five stars.
One issue remains.
Don’t screw up the landing, Marv.