Bio

Holly Interlandi is a writer, editor, and comic book creator.

Holly received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Southern California.

Freelance Fiction and Journalism

Holly started writing fiction at around age 10, waging “short story wars” against her sisters on a Brother word processor. She won a statewide poetry contest when she was 14 for the Shel Silverstein-esque “Bored”. When she was 19, she published the short story “Outcasts” on a short-lived online journal (the days of the internet were still early!) called Cenotaph. The story was later converted into comic format for Northwest Press’s anti-bullying anthology series Rise.

Other fiction and poetry credits include “Easy Beauty” for a journal called Peridot Books; “Home”, “When We Were Punk”, and several essays for the underground zine Barbaric Yawp; and a poem called “Nothing’s Shocking” for the legendary New York Quarterly.

Holly wrote and published fiction throughout her college and bookstore retail years, and she ultimately collected the stories into an e-book called Lounge Tales, of which acclaimed writer Richard C. Matheson raved, “Insidious, beautiful marvels. A talent with imagery, irony, and the oddly sinister.”

Holly always feels at home writing about rock and roll, and in the late 2000s, she worked with several independent magazines like Askew and Five For on articles about Japanese visual kei and Los Angeles local rock bands. She also wrote about fashion for Clear magazine and was a regular contributor of zine and indie comic reviews to the late great Small Press Review.

For the past several years, Holly has written installments for HiLoBrow‘s pop culture series, sharing her enthuasiam for Angel Sanctuary, Dragon Ball Z, boy bands, proto-punk, and metal.

Famous Monsters and American Gothic Press

Holly began her editing career after college as a freelancer proofreading brand messaging and memoirs, including a 600-page beast about the Vietnam War. Holly befriended horror writer Steve Niles and spent several years proofreading his comic book scripts and short stories for Dynamite and Dark Horse. She was given a special thanks in Bloody Pulp Books’ Cal McDonald: Detective Tales.

In 2011, Holly joined forces with Famous Monsters of Filmland as Copy Editor. She eventually became its Senior Writer, Associate Editor, and eventually Executive Editor. The magazine was first published in 1958, and over her years as its editor, the brand developed into a multimedia company with an events division, apparel line, and comic book imprint.

Holly edited and contributed to over 40 print issues of Famous Monsters, including specials and archives, and conducted interviews with horror genre legends like Doug Bradley, John Carpenter, Ricou Browning, George Clayton Johnson, Robert Rodriguez, Rob Zombie, Doug Jones, Mike Mignola, Kevin Eastman, and Sean Cunningham. She particularly took interest in horror comics and wrote features on Scott Snyder, Rick Remender, and many others. She represented the Famous Monsters brand at San Diego Comic-Con for nine years.

When Famous Monsters partnered with Hermes Press on Frank Frazetta Jr.’s book of memories about his father, Holly worked as Project Editor, arranging and editing the text into chapters of Frazetta’s life with accompanying artwork. Frank Frazetta: Art and Remembrances was published by Hermes Press in 2013.

Famous Monsters’ comic book imprint, American Gothic Press, published a carefully curated selection of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy comic books. The inaugural slate of titles included Gunsuits, Broken Moon, Bornhome, and Monster World, and featured acclaimed horror author Steve Niles and award-winning writer Paul Tobin on script duties. As Editor-in-Chief, Holly oversaw the development of every series.

In 2015, Holly edited and adapted two licensed unfilmed teleplays from the original Lost in Space TV show into comic books: “The Curious Galactics” and “Malice in Wonderland”. In 2016, AGP Kickstarted a 250-page comics and art anthology called Tales from the Acker-Mansion in honor of Famous Monsters’ longtime editor Forrest J. Ackerman. Among the featured writers were John Carpenter, Joe Lansdale, Richard C. Matheson, William F. Nolan, Dan DiDio, and Rob Zombie guitarist John 5.

Last Song and Black Mask Studios

When she was college, Holly wrote a novel called The Last Song. After fifteen years of pitching the story unsuccessfully as prose, it finally landed at Black Mask Studios, where Last Song was published as a four-issue comic book miniseries with Sally Cantirino and Natalie Jackson creating the art and DJ Hopkins on lettering duties. The complete Last Song trade paperback was released in 2022.

Holly also wrote an essay about comics superstar Junji Ito as back matter for Black Mask’s body horror series Come Into Me.

Anthologies and Opus

After the publisher of FM retired in 2020, Holly spent several years as a freelancer before eventually being recruited by Opus Comics to write origin stories for black metal band Cradle of Filth. In a comfortable return to Frank Frazetta, she began to edit the books in the publisher’s “Frazettaverse”—Death Dealer, Dawn Attack, Mothman, and others—as well as original titles based on metal bands like Helloween and Disturbed.

That same year, Holly was asked to participate in two horror author parodies: a comic short for  Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of Death for Ahoy Comics, published in 2021 in as half of Issue 2, and a comic short for Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell Volume 3: Battle Royale from Wannabe Press, published in 2022.

In 2023, Holly was recruited by rock superstar Gene Simmons to reboot his Dominatrix property into a new four-issue miniseries. After receiving enthusiastic approval of her pitch from Gene, Holly wrote four issues about government intrigue and fetish play that were artistically rendered by SL Gallant, Maria Keane, and Michael Woods, with pinup-style covers by Jim Balent. Three of the issues have been released by Opus Comics.

Life and Dogs

Holly lives in Los Angeles with her awesome dog, a pug-daschund mix named Bucky.

She has been a dog walker and handler at Los Angeles Animal Services East Valley Shelter since 2018. She has cleaned up lots of poop and given many treats and helped to organize rescue and transportation for red-listed dogs.