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Janet Shepheard was born Janet E. Evenden in Edmonton, Hertfordshire, in the second quarter of 1935, daughter of Leonard Evenden and his wife Kate, née Buckenham. She graduated from Hornsey College of Arts and Crafts in London, and took a job resizing American comics for UK publication with L. Miller & Son. She married John Shepheard in 1959.

She joined Fleetway Publications as art editor on Buster, and in the later 60s became art editor of Valiant until it was cancelled in 1976, working under Sid Bicknell on both comics. The job entailed layouts, designing covers, logos and feature pages, resizing and extending artwork for publication in different formats, and correcting and retouching errors in artwork, especially foreign artists' pages.

She was 2000 AD's first art editor in 1977, and designed the title logo for "Judge Dredd". When IPC launched a sister comic, Starlord, the art editor's job was offered to her assistant, Kevin O'Neill, but he turned it down, preferring to stay on 2000 AD, so Shepheard became art editor of Starlord, which only lasted six months, and O'Neill was promoted to art editor of 2000 AD. The following year she was art editor of the similarly short-lived Tornado, and then worked Roy of the Rovers, Eagle and Scream! until Robert Maxwell bought out Fleetway in 1987, and she was let go. She continued working on Roy of the Rovers on a freelance basis for three years until it switched to digital layout, after which she retired. She died on June 27 2014.

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