Atom was completely fine in both examples. He even said it would take hours for Apollo to kill them. The feats are exactly the ****ing same dude. Atom eats a ground and pound, gets saved by plot device. There is nothing innately more impressive about the Apollo fight than the Maul example, and Maul didn't "curb stomped" at least any more than Apollo did. The only difference is that Apollo had intend to kill... but that doesn't mean he accomplished more. If you were eating a ground and pound from Batman and Punisher, you would be more worried about Punisher not stopping until you were dead... but that doesn't mean Batman is going to kick your ass any less less. Hell, up until the point Bruce beats you unconscious, he'll likely do more damage, faster and more efficiently. Which is exactly what we saw. On panel. In the actual art. Something more valid than your "interpenetration."
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LIke I said, he was exhausted after his fight with Apollo, not after his fight with Maul. You'd know this if you actually read the comic:
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In contrast, after Captain Atom dispensed with Maul, he went on to curbstomp the rest of the Wild C.A.T.S. and was fine. He was goading him with that comment. It was a simple but effective ploy to get him to go to the Sun. If it were actually going to take hours, Captain Atom wouldn't have been fishing for weaknesses and thinking, "He's... he's really going to kill me. C'mon c'mon... There must be some way. He must have some weakness."
Don't be dense. Maul didn' go toe-to-toe with Captain Atom like Apollo did. Maul got curbstomped. Apollo nearly killed him.
Again with the art. Art sucks at designating powerlevels, keep in mind that there is the artistic licence of fitting a certain image to the story told. I agree that you can argue when you have a combination of image and text open to interpretation, what you're doing here is trying to build bridges in the air with images by clearly contradicting on panel narration.
Captain Atom was fighting since he got to the Wildstorm-verse. That's the most likely reason for his fatigue, and not ONLY from his fight with Apollo (Though I do agree he was clearly convinced Apollo had the power to kill him.)
The Apollo fight was days after the Maul fight, where he had time to not only rest up on the carrier, but visit over a hundred different worlds looking for DC Earth.
i don know much of superboy, iv seen good feats and rather low ones. im more familiar with Apollo but he ranges about the same with great showings and some low ones just with more blood-lust/will to kill if needed. i would go with apollo for the win but i dont know superboy that well so if someone could give me a pro and cons comparison of the two i would appreciate it.
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