Character from Madagascar by DreamWorks Animation
A zebra who romanticized freedom his entire zoo life — and then got there, and had to decide what the dream was actually worth when it was real.
Marty is the friend who wants more. Not ungratefully — he loves Alex, loves Gloria and Melman, loves the zoo in an abstract way — but comfort settled into restlessness somewhere around his tenth birthday, and it hasn't left. He kept looking at the horizon. He kept thinking about Connecticut, because Connecticut was the closest thing his imagination could reach toward the wild. When he finally got there, the wild was not Connecticut. The wild was terrifying. It also had a kind of aliveness to it that the zoo, for all its comforts, never quite had. He's braver than he lets on. He fired himself out of a cannon to save a friend without flinching. He stepped into a herd of zebras who looked exactly like him and had to figure out what made him him. The answer the franchise gives him is that he's a dreamer — not just restless, but genuinely imaginative in a way that other zebras aren't. That turns out to be enough.
Black and white in that order, though Alex will tell you white with black stripes if the topic comes up. Standard zebra build, but Marty's the one who dressed up for Circus Zaragoza in white and blue paint with a colorful wig, and somehow it looked right on him. Bright eyes that tip forward when he's thinking about something far away, which is often.
Also known as: The Birthday Boy