Brutus immediately stood out to me in the first trailer for Skeleton Crew, and I’m excited to see all the photos of Brutus’ costume at D23. I absolutely loved the werewolves in the Star Wars cantina, so I was excited to see them bring back the species in the new show. I hope he gets a number, which has been uncertain in the past, so I’m glad he makes the cut. Let’s meet the pirate captain Brutus!
There’s some nice artwork of Brutus on the sides and back of the box, but no biographical information about him, just a PR synopsis for the series. I think I’ll wait a few more weeks to get more information. I’m still getting used to the new box set for the series, but compared to Spec Ops and Marvel Legends, The Black Series doesn’t change much. I think the left side of the box is a bit plain and when looking at the nails I would like to have more identifying information on that side.
The accessories are five different blasters in five holsters that Brutus wears. The nice thing about these blasters is that they all have a bit of paint to bring out the detail, which is rare for this series.
Brutus has three blasters hanging from his chest, reminiscent of another pirate captain, the infamous Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard. Key stills from “Skeleton Crew” show how Brutus wears the guns on his chest, which match and fit those locations on the character’s body. I’m not sure about the last two guns, but the larger gun fits perfectly in the right holster and the smallest gun fits perfectly in the right holster.
The gun design is like something out of Star Wars, where they took a real-world gun and transformed it into something different. I’ve seen some discussion that these guns are a little too realistic, but I think they’re as different from their real world counterparts as Han’s DL-44 is a broomstick musser, but we’re just more realistic about pirate guns as we were kids The familiarity exceeds our familiarity with World War II weapons.
I was really impressed with the sculpting of Brutus, especially the textures of all the different materials of the costume. Brutus’ face looks exactly like what I’ve seen so far, but the hair is a little fuller here than what they showed in D23. This is closer to the scenes I’ve seen of him in trailers and stills, so I’m not worried. I think their tooth sizes might be a little crazier.
The paints are nice and I particularly like the weathered effect they have on the sleeves and coat ends. I think his face could use a little dry brushing to bring out the details and I wish the eyes would stand out more. Perhaps a brighter red and glossy coating would make them stand out, since they almost glowed red in the brief scenes we saw. I didn’t notice the red dot of the eye overlapping one of his lower eyelids until I looked at the close-up photo.
The black series has good clarity. They’ve slowly changed their standards over the years, but what they’ve done is going pretty well. I think the slight swivel you get from the ball and socket hips is milder than other recent bad versions of figures with thigh swivels. I do wish the ankles were tilted forward a bit to allow for better squatting. There’s a thin shirt covering on the shoulders, so while you get a decent range of motion, the shirt will lift up if your arms are raised too high. The cape is also very flexible and fairly thin while retaining detail. Brutus has:
- Rotate/articulate shoulders, elbows, hips, elbows and ankles
- Neck, head, waist, wrists under the ball socket
- Articulated butterfly bust
Overall, this is a decent number, a bit more than the usual paint hits you see on the Black Series. I think they did a great job of capturing what attracted me to the character’s look in the trailer. It’s always a bit dangerous to get too hung up on something new because of how a character looks in the trailer. They might be totally lame on the show, but at least I can always add them to my Cantina alien group.
