Mike Dringenberg (born ) is an American comics artist best known for his work on DC Comics/Vertigo's Sandman series with writer Neil Gaiman. Early life Mike Dringenberg was born in Laon, France and raised in Germany before moving to the United States with his family in the late 1960s. Initially living in New Jersey and Florida, his father's career eventually took the family to Utah, where Mike attended high school. He later studied illustration and graphic design at the University of Utah from 1983 to 1987, where he began illustrating comics and working professionally even before graduating. During a break between his freshman and sophomore years, he briefly worked as an animation assistant at Sullivan Bluth Studios, where he was probably best remembered for using up all the copier toner to make reading copies of his Cerebus collection. Career Dringenberg first work in the comics industry was the story "A Tale Of... Lenny's Casino & Grill" in Kelvin Mace #1 (Dec. 1985) published by Vortex Comics. His other early work in the 1980s for publishers such as Eclipse Comics included Alien Worlds, Enchanter, and Total Eclipse. He worked on Adolescent Radioactive Blackbelt Hamsters, a parody of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which itself was a parody of many then-current comic books, and Shock the Monkey. His mainstream work includes DC's Doom Patrol with writer Grant Morrison, where he co-created Flex Mentallo; the fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering; and White Wolf Publishing's card game Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. Dringenberg came to prominence for his work on The Sandman, where he started as the series' inker over pencil art by Sam Kieth but switched to pencilling when Kieth left after the fifth issue. He drew eleven issues, all but one inked by Malcolm Jones III, and his understated, realistic style did much to establish the tone of the series. He co-created the popular character Death, whom he based on his then muse, Cinamon Hadley, whom he knew from the dance clubs in Salt Lake City, Utah. Gaiman had imagined her looking like Louise Brooks or Nico, but ultimately preferred Dringenberg's version. Dringenberg stated in a 2014 interview that "None of the characters are direct renderings of individual people; they're composites emerging from my memories; case in point, while my friend Cinamon was a primary visual inspiration for Death, she never actually posed for me as the character while I worked on the