Gibbons was born on 14 April 1949, at Forest Gate Hospital in London, to Chester, a town planner, and Gladys, a secretary.

[3] Gibbons entered the British comics industry by working on horror and action titles for both DC Thomson and IPC.

One of his earlier works was a 12-part comic-series titled Year of the Shark Men for DC Thomson's The Wizard magazine, in April 1976 – July 1976.

[4] When the science-fiction title 2000 AD was set up in the mid-1970s, Gibbons contributed artwork to the first issue, Prog 01 (February 1977), and went on to draw the first 24 instalments of Harlem Heroes, one of the founding (and pre-Judge Dredd) strips.

These characters appeared in photographic form within the comic, with Gibbons posing as both Big E and Pilbeam for the entire 22-issue run of Tornado before it was subsumed into 2000 AD.

Gibbons departed from 2000 AD briefly in the late 1970s/early 1980s to become the lead artist on Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly, for which magazine he drew the main comic strip from issue No.

The Doctor Who Storybook 2007 (released Christmas 2006) features a story called "Untitled" which includes the name Gibbons in a list of great artists of Earth history.

Then I was at a convention in the US and asked Dick Giordano, managing director of DC at the time, point blank whether I could draw this thing Alan was writing.

'[5]To complement the story, Gibbons remembers working on rough character designs which ultimately changed little in their final appearance from "the descriptions that Alan had provided," trying to come up with "a classic superhero feel but be a little bit stranger ... a sort of operatic look ... an Egyptian kind of a look.

"[17] Comics historian Les Daniels noted that Watchmen "called into question the basic assumptions on which the super hero genre is formulated".

[18] DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed in 2010 that "As with The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen set off a chain reaction of rethinking the nature of super heroes and heroism itself, and pushed the genre darker for more than a decade.

[20][21][22] Watching the Watchmen is his take on the creation of the seminal work, and features a number of rarely seen pieces of artwork including sketches and character designs, as well as "stuff," he says "that I just don't know why I kept but I'm really pleased I did.

"[23] From the start of the 1990s, Gibbons began to focus as much on writing and inking as on drawing, contributing to a number of different titles and issues from a variety of companies.

Particular highlights included, in 1990, Gibbons writing the three-issue World's Finest miniseries for artist Steve Rude and DC,[24] while drawing Give Me Liberty for writer Frank Miller and Dark Horse Comics.

[6] He penned the first Batman Versus Predator crossover for artists Andy and Adam Kubert (Dec. 1991 – Feb. 1992), and inked Rick Veitch and Stephen R. Bissette for half of Alan Moore's 1963 Image Comics series (1993).

1 (Jan 1996), Gibbons wrote, penciled, inked, coloured and lettered "Old Friends", a version of the events of Captain America No.

[6] Among many other covers, one-shots and minor works, Gibbons worked with Alan Moore again briefly on the latter's Awesome Entertainment Judgment Day miniseries, providing (variant) covers to all three issues, on the first issue of Kitchen Sink Press's The Spirit: The New Adventures revival and within the pages of the Alan Moore Songbook.

He wrote The Rann–Thanagar War six-issue limited series for DC Comics, one of four lead-ins to the company-wide "Infinite Crisis" storyline, and returned to the Green Lantern Corps with the five-issue Green Lantern Corps: Recharge (Nov. 2005 – March 2006), co-written with Geoff Johns, which spun off into an ongoing, Gibbons-written series in August 2006.

The artists included Gibbons, Frank Quitely, John Romita Jr., Jock, Adi Granov,[31] Doug Braithwaite, Ian Churchill, Olivier Coipel, Duncan Fegredo, Simon Furman, David Lafuente, John McCrea, Sean Phillips and Liam Sharp,[32] who all drew a panel each, with regular Superior artist Leinil Yu creating the book's front cover.

The book was completed in 11 hours, 19 minutes, and 38 seconds, and was published through Icon on 23 November 2011, with all royalties being donated to Yorkhill Children's Foundation.

[34] Works other than comics include providing the cartoon strip on the inside sleeve of Jethro Tull's 1976 album Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die!, background art for the 1994 computer game Beneath a Steel Sky and the cover to K, the 1996 debut album by psychedelic rock band Kula Shaker.

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars – Director's Cut (2009) featured hand drawn art by Dave Gibbons.