Mike Dringenberg

Mike Dringenberg
Dringenberg, left, with friend Cinamon Hadley on whom Death was modeled
Born	c. 1965 Laon, France
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Penciller, Inker
Notable works	The Sandman

Mike Dringenberg (born c. 1965) is a German/American comic book artist best known for his work on DC Comics/Vertigo's Sandman series with writer Neil Gaiman.

Dringenberg was born in Laon, France. Dringenberg's earliest work was in independent comics in the 1980s for publishers such as Eclipse Comics and Vortex Comics, including Enchanter, Alien Worlds, Total Eclipse and Kelvin Mace. 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 Cinamon, a woman 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 series. Most of the time, my girlfriend Givette and my friends McAnn and Nyssa actually posed and they each brought their own personalities to the task." He co-created Desire, basing his/her appearance on the work of Patrick Nagel, and had a hand in much of the character design apparent in the early series.