Just wanted to give a big shout out to CJ for carrying Banthaskull on his sweater-vested shoulders for the month of March.  I almost forgot I was supposed to do content.  But Chris snapped me out of it, so I had to brush off the rust and get back to work.  But seriously - thank you, CJ!

Eleventh Brother made his first appearances in the animated anthology series Tales.  His debut was in the 6th episode of Tales of the Jedi, in which he was sent to investigate reports of a Jedi sighting.  After initially failing to find any Jedi, he burned a village and wiped out most of the inhabitants, before Ahsoka revealed herself.  Eleventh Brother attacked, but Ahsoka, despite not having a lightsaber of her own, prevailed with some nifty dance moves before disarming the Inquisitor, and decapitating him with his own weapon.  He appeared again in the 4th episode of Tales of the Empire, when we briefly see him earlier in his career at the Inquisitor’s Fortress on the water world of Nur.  He is nicknamed “The Crow”, because the Inquisitors liked to josh each other when they were hanging out in the dorms.  The name, of course, would indicate that there are “crows” in the galaxy far, far away.  We already knew this, of course, because of the Moldy Crow flown by Kyle Katarn in Legends continuity.  Remarkably, the ship was re-canonized, although Kyle Katarn himself has not.  Good times. 

I’m a huge fan of “crews” in our collection.  Not the incomplete ones, of course; only the completed ones.  But unless a comprehensive multipack was headed our way, it takes some time to complete crews.  Or at least it did back in the day.  Now it takes close to never to complete crews, which is frustrating.  While I prefer OT/PT stuff in my collection, I have gotten a bit of a soft spot for the Inquisitors.  Despite their annoying “helicopter” lightsabers, I found their concept pretty cool.  And they’ve been present in a wide array of media.  While they first gained prominence in Rebels, they’ve now appeared in additional animated shows, a couple of live action shows, and (perhaps most importantly to me), The Cal Kestis video games.  As such, I’ve decided that I would really like a complete collection of the Inquisitors.  The problem, aside from Hasbro’s core value of doing everything possible to avoid completing any crews, it’s a bit murky as to who is in the Inquisitorius.  I’ll save those details for the upcoming VC386 Marrok review.  It’s a big cliffhanger, I know.  But we needed to do something to keep people engaged.

After appearing in two of the Tales series (and dying in one of them), Eleventh Brother is set to appear in Maul: Shadow Lord.  There’s no telling yet how big of a part he might play, but it would seem that he, along with Marrok, are trying to take out Maul.  Maul, of course, became a huge pain in the arse to just about everyone after surviving being bisected by Obi-Wan.  So it seems to reason that the Inquisitorius would have him on the naughty list.  But I’m assuming they’re after him, and I don’t really know what’s supposed to happen in the show.  Maybe they just want to hang out and watch baseball.

As for the figure, it’s pretty cool, if not particularly exciting.  When I first saw him on screen, I thought that he might make a cool action figure, but then he died like a chump almost immediately, and I didn’t even know his name, so I thought it would be a waste.  But after settling on wanting the Inquisitor crew, I warmed up to the concept, and then was reasonably pleased when he was announced.  Having it in hand is a bit…underwhelming, however.

I have almost no complaints about Eleventh Brother as an action figure.  Hasbro did pretty much everything you would expect/demand that they do for a Force-using character. The sculpt is well done, and it appears he’s almost all new, with the exception of the legs, which as our friend Mr. Miko had pointed out to me, are recycled from the VC264 Luke Skywalker (Imperial Light Cruiser).  Everything else is all new, including his armored arms, hands, belt/gear assembly, torso, and hooded head. 

Nothing particular special with most of these parts, but the head and hands do stand out to me, for better or worse.  The hands are interesting in that they are not typical human hands.  They have long and pointy fingers.  I’m not sure if this is because he may not be human and this is his natural anatomy, or because he is wearing some kind of glove/claw thing.  Either way, they look like black gloves with pointy metallic exoskeleton fingers.  The left hand is open, with his finger spread apart, which gives a bit of a menacing look.  His left hand is more compacted in its pose, which is necessary to interact with his lightsaber.  Unfortunately, to my eye, it give an asymmetrical appearance, similar to my one complaint about the otherwise nearly perfect HAS010 Greedo figure.  Kind of like both of these characters’ right hands have atrophied and shriveled.

As for the head, the skeletal crow mask should be an awesome signature look that makes the figure special.  But something about the execution is underwhelming.  My best attempt to explain is that the plastic hood / face combo looks too simplistic to make the necessary impact.  A close look shows that these are two pieces, but they are glued together.  So it’s not like VC200 The Emperor where the hood and the face can be separated.  Obviously we don’t see the Crow’s mask/head separate from his hood, so I don’t really fault Hasbro too much, but the (essentially) one piece head is just a little too POTF2 for my tastes.  It lacks depth and detail, and is a bit of a throwback.  I don’t think, by any stretch, that this ruins the figure, it just stopped me from being totally satisfied with the final product.

A particularly outstanding feature is the soft goods cape.  Hasbro keeps upping their game on their execution of soft goods capes.  This one is sculpted so that there is a double layered look on the placket.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before in a 3.75” cape.  More noticeable are the dual Imperial Cog logos which appear near the shoulders.  Such details are also rare, and the only time off the top of my head that have seen something this before is on VC17 General Grievous’s cape.  It’s perfect.

For articulation, this figure has everything expected of it, including rocker ankles, ball-hinged wrists, and a ball jointed waist/torso.  While the knees just barely flex past 90 degrees, the elbows, thankfully flex much farther, as they should.  There’s simply no excuse for humanoid figures to lack the extra range of motion in the elbows and knees.

“The Crow” comes with a typical Inquisitor red, double-bladed lightsaber, as well as an unlit circular hilt.  He has a peg on the left side of his belt to accommodate the unlit hilt.  He can grip either accessory with his right hand fairly well, although not so much with his open left hand. 

Overall, Eleventh Brother is a well done figure, with excellent likeness, sculpt, articulation, and soft goods cape.  The one detractor may just be a nitpick to my own eyes, but the one piece hood/mask is a bit of a step back.  It’s still an excellent addition to the line, and I’m please to get another Inquisitor.  Marrok is here as well, so that’s 2 more members of the Inquisitorius that we can check off - if you care about such things.