John Derrick writes...

Twelve episodes into "Young Justice," and my question is essentially the same one I asked after the premiere: why is this show so predominantly focused on the male characters at the expense of the female?

The show still features only two girls on the team. The women of the Justice League have hardly been seen at all - your interviews when the show began certainly led me to believe Black Canary would play a far stronger role. But most frustrating of all, even this far into the season, Miss Martian and Artemis are consistently portrayed as the least experienced heroes struggling to keep up with the boys.

Last week in "Terrors," we got to see Superboy and Miss Martian undercover together - with M'Gann quickly discovered and captured, and eventually rescued by Superboy. This week, Artemis got to follow Robin around, panicking and asking, "What do we do?!" Yes, she was the one to save her teammates in the end, but she did so following Robin's plan, and the momentum of the episode was built around her fear, not her strength. It would have been a powerful emotional journey - if your show also allowed women to be the strong and independent heroes as often as the boys. When most of the stories are about the guys taking the lead, an episode like this about Artemis just serves to underline the disparity between the tough guy heroes and the emotional rookie girls.

(And a more minor note: I was also pretty disappointed by the cameo from Barbara Gordon, one of my favorite comic characters in all her incarnations - reducing such a brilliant and independent person to a moment of glaring jealousy.)

I'm sincerely baffled how such a dude-heavy show can come from the writer behind the many wonderful women of Spectacular Spider-Man - not to mention the same writer who gave the world Elisa Maza!