Gary Northfield (born June 1969) is a British cartoonist, most famous for his Derek the Sheep comic strip published in DC Thomson's The Beano and BeanoMAX . [1]
Born in Romford, [2] Northfield graduated from Harrow College University of Westminster with a degree in Illustration in 1992. [3] He joined the British small press comics [4] community in 1999, creating various titles such as Great!, Little Box of Comics and Stupidmonsters. [5] In 2002, he acquired the position of in-house illustrator at Eaglemoss Publications, where he worked for five years on projects such as Horrible Histories Magazine, Horrible Science Magazine and The Magical World of Roald Dahl . [3]
Derek the Sheep began appearing in The Beano from February 2004, and is unique in that it is The Beano's first and only creator-owned character. [6] [7] [5] A collection of early Derek the Sheep stories was published by Bloomsbury Publishing in September 2008 and in France by Actes Sud/Editions De L'an2, [8] reprinting the first thirteen strips in The Beano.
In 2008, Northfield illustrated the comic strip Pinky's Crackpot Circus for The Dandy , and wrote and drew World's Greatest Heroes for National Geographic Kids . In 2009, he created Little Cutie for The DFC . In 2012 his strip Gary's Garden began appearing regularly in the weekly comic, The Phoenix , with the first year's worth of strips collected in the book The Phoenix Presents - Gary's Garden: Book 1 . In 2016, he returned to The Beano with the strip Zooella.
He also illustrated the children's books Henry VIII Has To Choose and Sleeping Beauty: 100 Years Later, for Franklin Watts. [9]
In 2013, Walker Books published The Terrible Tales Of The Teenytinysaurs, a collection of never-before published strips. [10]
Northfield's first children's novel and international best seller Julius Zebra: Rumble with the Romans! , was published by Walker books in March 2015. His subsequent books in the series are: Julius Zebra: Battle with the Britons! , Julius Zebra: Entangled with the Egyptians! , with the next installment Julius Zebra: Grapple with the Greeks! published in October 2018. His first joke book, Julius Zebra Joke Book Jamboree! was published in June 2019.
In 2017, Northfield alongside his partner, established a new children’s comic book publisher, Bog Eyed Books. [11]