Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, she attended Catholic schools, K -12, and Middle Tennessee State University where she achieved a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

[3] Tyler became interested in the underground comics movement while pursuing a master's degree in painting at Syracuse University in the early 1980s.

[5] Tyler's short slice-of-life stories and her distinctive artwork brought her critical attention as one of a growing number of female artists shaping the direction of underground/alternative comics in North America in the 1980s; she appeared in the influential feminist anthologies Wimmen's Comix and Twisted Sisters.

She produced short comics for publications including LA Weekly, Pulse (Tower Records), Strip AIDS, Heck, and Zero Zero.

Before that, in 2015, the You'll Never Know trilogy was combined in to one volume called "Soldier's Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father, A Daughter's Memoir.

[20] DAAP Galleries staged a major one-woman exhibit of Tyler's work which included "...written entries of her ascent into illustration, accompanied by artworks and sketches from throughout her career," and "...eclectic 3-D creations...A flashing, multicolored light inside of a star rotates along one wall.

An interactive piece called the "Ego-Meter" asks viewers to pull a string that raises a wooden face up the meter.

In 2020, Carol Tyler's work was chosen to be a part of the Society of Illustrators Museum exhibit "Women in Comics: Looking Forward, Looking Back".

[22] From November 5–20, 2021, "Shaping Grief: Carol Tyler's Mourning Mind" an interactive art experience was featured at the DSGN Collective in Cincinnati, OH.

It was composed of comics, repurposed objects, murals, mobiles, and a giant mourning bonnet which served as a gateway through which people would walk to observe the exhibit.

[23][24] Carol Tyler and her late husband Justin Green are the subject of the documentary film Married to Comics, which premiered in 2023 at the Small Press Expo event feature at the AFI Silver Theater and Culture Center.

[36] Tyler's piece "The Hannah Story", published in Drawn & Quarterly, was nominated for a 1995 Eisner Award and is on the Fantagraphics list of Top 100 Comics of the Twentieth Century.