Dringenberg first work in the comics industry was the story "A Tale Of... Lenny's Casino & Grill" in Kelvin Mace #1 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 '; and White Wolf Publishing's card game '. . 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 Hadley, 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. Dringenberg's work appears in the Sandman collections "", "" and "". He is credited in every printing as being one of the series' creators, as he is responsible for the iconic representation of many of the principal characters. In 2008, he was one of the artists for Tori Amos' Comic Book Tattooanthologygraphic novel. Dringenberg is an illustrator of book jackets and CD covers, most notably for various books by J. R. R. Tolkien, Kij Johnson, Charles de Lint, Kage Baker, and San Francisco's Big City Orchestra. He did interior decorations for Sharyn November's Firebirds Soaring.
