After joining the Army for his National Service, Lawrence used his gratuity to study art at Borough Polytechnic Institute (now the London South Bank University) but failed his final exams.

Lawrence was inspired to take some samples to an editor at Amalgamated Press who suggested he try showing them to Mick Anglo, who ran a studio packaging comic strips for a London publisher and magazine distributor, Len Miller.

When the ailing Sun merged with Lion, Lawrence switched to swashbuckling historical strips, Olac the Gladiator, Karl the Viking and Maroc the Mighty (written by Michael Moorcock).

When his publisher refused to give him any form of royalties or compensation, he departed from his old employer and was immediately offered work on a new Dutch comic magazine called Eppo.

[citation needed] A number of partly completed and unpublished comic strips appeared in the series Don Lawrence Collection, published in the Netherlands.