The last two characters to be featured on this series are both teenage superheroes with "Miss" in the title. Coincidence? Actually it's just because I'm sill hyped about Young Justice coming back so I wanted to talk more about it, so, let's discuss my favourite character from the series, Miss Martian.*Spoilers Ahead*
Miss Martian AKA Megan AKA M'Gann M'orzz is the niece of founding Justice League member Martian Manhunter who is invited to join Young Justice in order to learn more about humans and Earth Culture. Now when we first meet her she is a very perky, upbeat character who feels like she belongs in a bad sitcom from the 70s...Only for it to turn out that is exactly what she based her own personality on. One of my favourite little touches with Martian culture is how they interpret Earth culture, so for them, cheesy sitcoms from the 70s are magnificent works of art, and M'Gann saw a character in one of these shows and based everything from her looks to her personality all on the main character Megan from the show "Hello, Megan!". But she didn't just do this because she thought this was what a cool person was supposed to be, but because she has a deep dark secret.
Miss Martian is not actually a Green Martian, but a White Martian, a race of creatures who are considered disgusting, violent, untrustworthy, hideous and is something she is incredibly ashamed of, so she lies about her true identity to everyone. However, in the episode where this is brought up, in any other cartoon this would be the one where she's honest about her true form and would no longer be ashamed...but she doesn't. She is still ashamed of who she is that she lies to her friends, hell, later on in the show, she goes as far to knock her friends unconscious and alter their memories so they don't find out.
This is all why I love Miss Martian as a character, though overall as a person she is incredibly kind and innocent and loveable, she has so much darkness suppressed in side of her and has done some seriously questionable things. In season two when she thinks Aqualad murdered one of their friends, she has absolutely no quarrel with attempting to kill him, by invading his mind, torturing him and putting him in a coma, and if she didn't find out the truth, she absolutely would have gone far enough to do just that.
Though most of the Young Justice characters are fantastic, it's Miss Martian that stands out for being one of those characters that I didn't know that much about beforehand, but what I did know about her did not impress me. Here they've transformed her into someone who can be genuinely kind and optimistic, but has a seriously messed up side to her that feels perfectly natural considering her background. That contrast between the two sides of her is what makes such such a fascinating character to watch and is also the biggest improvement from her comic book counterpart.
-Danny
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