Dærick Gröss Sr. (Richard ‘Rick’ Gröss) grew up in the Dayton suburb of Kettering, Ohio, and was a comic book fan from childhood. He attended Ohio University from 1965 to 1967, studying art and theatre. During his time at university Rick met his wife Lolly; they had two children, their artist son Dærick becoming the ‘Jr.’ to his father’s ‘Sr.’

As an artist and illustrator, Rick developed a strong following over the years. His work spanned many media and genres, including stage playbills, illustrations for newspapers and magazines, comic strips and comic books, caricatures, fantasy role-playing and card games, and commercial illustration. He generously shared his knowledge as a teacher and mentor to many students throughout his long career. Rick worked across many publications including the extremely popular human sexuality book The Guide to Getting It On, and became well known was known for his Hirschfeld- and Mucha-inspired style caricatures and illustrations. He was equally at home with colour pencils, gouache paints, graphite, ink dyes, and latterly with digital artwork.

A huge collector of comic books since childhood, Rick entered his beloved world of comic book illustration in his early forties. In 1988 he created the Latina mutant Murciélaga She-Bat, part of the REIKI team in Robo Warriors. In the early 1990s, two issues of Murciélaga She-Bat were published by Heroic Publishing, and a third by Revolutionary Comics. In 2000, two comics featuring Murciélaga were released as a bilingual flipbook in both Spanish and English. Heroic Publishing later reprinted the original eight issues of the series.

Dærick Gröss painted interior art for twelve issues of an adaptation of the Anne Rice The Vampire Lestat series published by Innovation Comics, for which he won Comicon’s Russ Manning Award for most promising newcomer.

Gröss’s production company Dærick Gröss Studios was founded in 1989, and renamed Studio G in 1990. His son Dærick Jr. worked with him, and took over the running of Studio G. In 2008 Dærick Gröss moved to the Simi Valley in California, and as well as original artwork produced T-shirt designs, prints, and other products featuring his work. In 2019 Gröss turned to political cartooning, with the satirical comic Trumpy.

Studio G have maintained Dærick Gröss’s website here, showing the whole range of this remarkable artist’s output including paintings, comics, game artwork, caricature, and experimental digital artworks.