Holly Roberts

Holly Roberts read the X-Men’s ‘Dark Phoenix Saga’ when she was seven years old and has had an abiding love of evil redheads ever since. This also began a life-long obsession with comics which followed her to Oxford University, where she took a joint honours BA in Ancient and Modern History, and was inspired to embark upon her ongoing mission to read through Marvel Comic’s extensive back catalogue, which seemed relatively small in comparison with her weekly reading lists. She also found time to squeeze in her dissertation on queer life in Early Medieval Europe: ‘”Learning I Loved”: Alcuin’s Romances in Charlemagne’s Court.’

Unsure what to do with an extensive knowledge of archaic male love poetry, Holly tried out bartending, psychology, travelling, teaching, tour guiding, and massage therapy, before finding her place at the University of Dundee, taking their Master’s of Literature in Comics and Graphic Novels. There, she fulfilled her childhood dream of making people listen to her lecture on the ‘Dark Phoenix Saga’, and married her two specific interests of Marvel Comics and queer history to produce her Master’s dissertation: ‘More than a Metaphor: Understanding Queer Representation and Queer America in Marvel Comics of the 1980s and 1990s.’ She also designed and sewed four Greek mythology inspired cross-stitch comics panels, wrote her first academic publication on Captain America in Avengers Endgame, and provided her friends with homemade cupcakes and ice cream.

Holly currently lives in London where she contemplates finishing her many half-written projects, spends far too much time reading queer fanfiction and romance novels, and tries to resist adding to her superhero teddy bear collection. In her free time, she is attempting to run a comics academia website.

Twitter: @walmer92