Erik Larsen was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He started drawing seriously at an early age, and broke into comics when he published a fanzine called Graphic Fantasy, featuring his character 'The Dragon'. His first professional work was in 1983 when he drew a story for the comic anthology Megaton.
Larsen went on to work for several companies, including AC Comics ('Sentinels of Justice'), Eclipse Comics ('The DNAgents'), DC ('The Outsiders', 'Teen Titans', 'Adventures of Superman' and 'Doom Patrol'). For Marvel, Larsen has worked on a variety of characters and books like 'Amazing Spider-Man' and 'Spider-Man, Punisher'. He followed a successful run by another artist, Todd McFarlane, and continued to establish sales records utilizing his own personal style for the Spider-Man character.
Then, in 1992, Larsen left Marvel and joined together with Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, Jim Valentino, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri and Jim Lee to form Image Comics. For Image he produced his own comic called 'The Savage Dragon'. In addition to his work for Image, Larsen Larsen has occasionally returned to Marvel to work on titles like 'Fantastic Four', 'The Defenders', 'Wolverine' and 'Nova'. He has also wrote 'Aquaman' for DC Comics.