Career
He is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Canada. His humour is usually observational or absurd. His work first appeared in the New Musical Express in 1984 with the Captain Star comic strip, which was made into an animated cartoon series in 1997.
Captain Star also appeared in The Observer, Zeit Magazin, and various comics in the United Kingdom, Europe and America.
Other comic strips appeared in many publications including The Times and the Sunday Telegraph. The strip Loomus can currently be seen in The Guardian.
His work has also appeared on album covers, most notably on Trompe le Monde by the Pixies. In 2014 he produced over 100 drawings for Black Francis & Josh Frank"s novel The Good Inn.
His series of cartoons Steven Appleby"s Normal Life was successful enough not only to be translated into German and published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, but also to be made into a radio series for British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4.
An earlier series, Small Birds Singing, which ran for eight years in The Times, concerned itself with the usually surreal doings of the occupants of an English country house. Appleby has also had many exhibitions of paintings, published over 20 books and collaborated on a musical play, Crocs In Frocks (with Teresa Early and Roger Gosling), which was staged in Camberwell and at the International Cooperation Administration, London, in 2006. His most recent book, Guide to Life, was published by Guardian Books in October 2012.
