Board Thread:Episodic and Issue Discussion/@comment-47881-20130223164815/@comment-64.179.181.224-20130227205910

Zergrinch wrote: There's no guarantee the three of them could have taken on Black Beetle AND the soldiers (it was Arsenal who kept them out).

Nightwing is a melee fighter; he's ineffective vs. Black. His ranged weapons, if any, would be as effective as Robin's and Batgirl's (aka zero effectiveness)

Miss Martian will not last against Black either. He's fought off Green Beetle easily, and this is a Martian WITH a scarab. A Martian without a scarab? Easy pickings, since she's not a ranged fighter either.

Supercycle is the wild card. It's incompatible with the scarab, but he can blast it too. While I agree with most of this, I have a different view about Miss M. I think she could (possibly) have been the deciding factor in an encounter with Black Beetle. He beat her last time (in "Before the Dawn") sort of by default. She wasn't expecting that Black Beetle would be able to shift the density of a door -- let alone the fact that she probably had no clue who was behind the door to begin with. Not only that, but after frying Kal's mind, she was definitely not prepared for another battle. If she was willing to use her full powers against him, I'm betting she'd win -- and rather easily, I might add. But at this point I just don't believe she's willing to go that route, and so she the most she'd probably do is use her telekinesis on him and hope that Sphere could take care of the rest ('cause there's absolutely nothing that Nightwing could even conceivably do in this case, short of using one of the Red Beetles' weapons against him).

That being said, you're definitely right about Arsenal. He was the one (in "The Hunt") who closed the door and prevented reinforcements (do we call them Red Beetles?) from assisting Black Beetle. While it probably is true that Miss M, Sphere, and (for all intents and purposes) Nightwing could have beaten Black Beetle, or at least kept him occupied long enough to release their friends, they definitely would've had a much, much harder time with the Red Beetles and Black Beetle. And quite honestly, I just don't see Nightwing as being the type to suggest releasing another enemy (in this case Mongul) in the hopes that maybe he'll be more angry with the Reach than with the people who actually took the War World from him. As far as that goes, it was a huge risk on Arsenal's part -- but one that fortunately paid off.

Also, you have to keep in mind that the battle between Green Beetle and Black Beetle seems to have been staged. Black was supposed to lose (convincingly) so that Green would be accepted by the team. I really thought he was one of the good guys! The whole bit about Martian physiology making it impossible for the scarab to control him, and instead the reverse taking place, sounded feasible. I had some doubts after he "fixed" the scarab, when Jaime said that it was "silent", although I was still shocked when we saw Green, Blue, and Black Beetle all together in "The Runaways".

The one thing that I don't get: how or why is it that Apokoliptan and Reach technology are incompatible with each other? And what, exactly, does that mean? Or is it just kind of a one way deal: Reach tech is not compatible with Apokoliptan tech, but Apokoliptan tech can have an effect on Reach tech?