Since we're talking realism here anyway, I thought I'd drop in and say that fighting with a prosthetic would actually be pretty harsh on your body, even if it gave you more strength (which I can't really see happening).
A. With a prosthetic, your strength still comes from your body. This seems to be the best we have right now in that department:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qUPnnROxvY
It's really, really good, but when you want to punch with it, you still need to employ your actual body to give it momentum. Same goes for kicking, and you would need more body strength to move a heavy chunk of metal than you would your own leg.
Getting hit by something metal probably hurts more than getting hit by flesh, but Matt is not hitting anyone with flesh; he's hitting with a thick layer of dense protective gear, so the change would probably be minimal in that department, especially if Melvin makes the limb to blend in with the rest of the costume.
B. When you hit with a prosthetic, it will jumble against your flesh. It's not part of you, and the action-reaction law that Newton established is not on your side. Just try to attach something solid to your hand and then slam it into a punching bag; it hurts A LOT more than just hitting the bag with your own hand.
This effect would make his kicks/punches much weaker, because even Daredevil can't take repeated damage to the exact same piece of his body over and over again for very long.
And even with weaker punches, it could still cause serious injury to where the prosthetic and the limb meet, all the way to possibly loosing more flesh or even life endangerment from blood clots or something. People get seriously hurt over much smaller things that repeatedly slamming your prosthetic into your limb on days on end.
Re: Amputee Matt
Since we're talking realism here anyway, I thought I'd drop in and say that fighting with a prosthetic would actually be pretty harsh on your body, even if it gave you more strength (which I can't really see happening).
A. With a prosthetic, your strength still comes from your body. This seems to be the best we have right now in that department:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qUPnnROxvY
It's really, really good, but when you want to punch with it, you still need to employ your actual body to give it momentum. Same goes for kicking, and you would need more body strength to move a heavy chunk of metal than you would your own leg.
Getting hit by something metal probably hurts more than getting hit by flesh, but Matt is not hitting anyone with flesh; he's hitting with a thick layer of dense protective gear, so the change would probably be minimal in that department, especially if Melvin makes the limb to blend in with the rest of the costume.
B. When you hit with a prosthetic, it will jumble against your flesh. It's not part of you, and the action-reaction law that Newton established is not on your side. Just try to attach something solid to your hand and then slam it into a punching bag; it hurts A LOT more than just hitting the bag with your own hand.
This effect would make his kicks/punches much weaker, because even Daredevil can't take repeated damage to the exact same piece of his body over and over again for very long.
And even with weaker punches, it could still cause serious injury to where the prosthetic and the limb meet, all the way to possibly loosing more flesh or even life endangerment from blood clots or something. People get seriously hurt over much smaller things that repeatedly slamming your prosthetic into your limb on days on end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury
Sorry if I rained on your parade :] Feel free to ignore science like any proper comic book author would ;)