Ares: Behind the Science

Ares: Behind the Science Ares has apparently decided that sitting in Hades's chair makes him the man for the job. That's where Hellchild: Inferno finds him, and Angelica is about as impressed as you'd expect a daughter to be when somebody starts bragging about taking over after her father died. I'm sticking to the 2018 one-shot here. This isn't a list of every power a Greek god of war has ever had in mythology or another comic universe. Ares tears through Lori's club and steals Pandora's box. That brings Angelica and Mercy Dante into the same mess, although they waste a fair amount of time fighting each other before they get to him. Mercy wants the box because it could help her get Frank back. Angelica has a more personal reason to dislike the thief once she finds out who he is and what he's claiming. When they confront him at Santa Monica Pier, he puts on a pretty convincing display. He's armored, he's throwing around supernatural energy, and he talks like their resistance is just going to make their eventual humiliation more entertaining. He hits the ground with his sword and catches Angelica in an electrical-looking attack. Mercy's gunfire isn't doing the job against his armor, either. That armor is the part I'd separate from the rest of his abilities. Stopping a projectile and making the force of the impact disappear aren't the same thing. Real protective armor can deform, break up a projectile, or spread its load across a larger area. What happens to the person underneath still depends on the armor, the projectile, the support behind it, and the amount of deformation. You can stop penetration and still have an injury. With Ares, we're watching a divine body inside supernatural equipment. The pages don't give us enough to separate exactly how much protection comes from the armor and how much comes from him. They definitely don't give us a useful material specification. Calling it “bulletproof” as shorthand for this exchange shouldn't turn into “nothing can hurt him.” Because something does. Mercy gets behind him and drives both of her daggers into his shoulders. Angelica keeps attacking from the front with her poleaxe. They bring him down through a coordinated assault rather than by taking turns politely absorbing whatever he throws at them. He's bleeding and on his knees before Angelica attempts the finishing blow. Those are supernatural weapons and supernatural fighters, so I wouldn't turn the scene into a real-world claim that an ordinary knife beats a gun against armor. What's interesting is how quickly his apparent advantage disappears once he has to deal with both women at once. His confidence is much more comprehensive than his actual defense. He also has an exit. Before Angelica can finish him, he vanishes in black tendrils and leaves them with a threat. The final image shows him alive on the throne. They recover the box, but they don't kill him or settle the question of who controls the Underworld. That last distinction is easy to lose if you're only collecting victories and power levels. Ares loses this fight and still has somewhere to retreat. Angelica gets the object they came for and chooses not to chase her father's throne. He seems much more attached to possessing that position than she is, and the contrast makes him look smaller despite all the armor and divine theatrics. Source: Hellchild: Inferno one-shot (2018).