Comics / Spotlight / Knowledge and Scholarship

Who's Who - J. Skyler

By Hervé St-Louis
August 7, 2012 - 10:06

Technically, J. Skyler would be the second oldest ComicBookBin writer after Philip Schweier. His first article was submitted way back on May 6 2003. It was a discussion about Batgirl versus Oracle. But Skyler’s second article came so late, three years later in November 2006,  that I’ve chosen to put him here instead. There are the only two articles written by Skyler a long time comic book fan and a publicly homosexual man. What does his sexual orientation has to do with anything he writes you ask? Well, his articles have to do with female characters. He seems to adore them. Particularly, he adores the female versions of strong male characters like Batman and Superman.

I’ve always wondered if there was an analogue of diva worship of female comics characters in gay men. I know for a fact that some of Wonder Woman’s biggest fans are gay guys. She’s definitely a gay icon. But Batgirl and Supergirl don’t strike me as gay icons. They are after all, junior versions of existing male leads. But what Skyler had to say about them was quite profound. He found more depth in those characters than I ever did. He proved that they were not just characters tailored to please young heterosexual men with the feminized versions of their strong hero worship. He wrote about these characters being important to him. He did not make any direct link between them and his homosexuality, but if you read through the lines, you can sense the kinship and how he relates to them. How much they mean to him as a gay man. I find this stuff fascinating. It’s just too bad, that we have to wait so many years apart to read stuff like that. Fortunately, Skyler has his own voice on the Web he’s a frequent participant on MySpace and other public social networks. I do remember that he used to have his own blog, but I can’t find it anymore.

Who's Who @ComicBookBin is a feature celebrating the 10th anniversary of ComicBookBin where publisher Hervé St-Louis features writers past and present that have contributed to ComicBookBin over the years.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12