In 1966, Wrightson began working for
The Baltimore Sun newspaper as an illustrator. The following year, after meeting artist
Frank Frazetta at a
comic-book convention in New York City, he was inspired to produce his own stories. In 1968, he showed copies of his
sequential art to
DC Comics editor
Dick Giordano and was given a freelance assignment. Wrightson began spelling his name "Berni" in his professional work to distinguish himself from an Olympic
diver named
Bernie Wrightson, but later restored the final "e" to his name. In 1968, he drew his first professional comic book story, "The Man Who Murdered Himself", which appeared in
House of Mystery #179 (
cover-dated March–April 1969). Like many artists in the 1970s and 1980s, Wrightson moved to New York in hopes of finding work with comics publishers. At one point Wrightson lived in the same Queens apartment building as artists
Allen Milgrom,
Howard Chaykin and
Walter Simonson. Simonson recalls, "We'd get together at 3 a.m. They'd come up and we'd have popcorn and sit around and talk about whatever a 26, 27 and 20-year-old guys talk about. Our art, TV, you name it. I pretty much knew at the time, 'These are the good ole days.'" Wein later recounted how Wrightson became involved with the story: "Bernie Wrightson had just broken up with a girlfriend, and we were sitting in my car just talking about life – all the important things to do when you're 19 and 20 years old. [
Laughs] And I said, 'You know, I just wrote a story that actually kind of feels like the way you feel now.' I told him about Swamp Thing, and he said, 'I gotta draw that.'" In summer 1972, Wrightson published
Badtime Stories, a horror/science fiction comics anthology featuring his own scripts and artwork (from the period 1970–1971), each story being drawn in a different medium, including ink wash, tonal pencil drawings, duoshade paper, and screen tones, along with traditional pen-and-ink and brushwork. He and writer
Marv Wolfman co-created
Destiny in
Weird Mystery Tales #1 (July–Aug. 1972), a character which would later be used in the work of
Neil Gaiman. In the fall of 1972, the Swamp Thing returned in his own series, set in the contemporary world and in the general DC continuity. Wrightson drew the first ten issues of the series. Wrightson had originally been asked by DC to handle the art for its revival of
The Shadow, but he left the project early on when he realized he could not produce the necessary minimum number of pages on time, along with his work on
Swamp Thing.
Warren and The Studio In the summer of 1973, Wrightson saw the
Tod Browning horror film Freaks for the first time; in the years immediately afterward, the film influenced much of Wrightson's creative output. In January 1974, Wrightson left DC to work at
Warren Publishing, In 1975, Wrightson joined with fellow artists
Jeff Jones,
Michael Kaluta, and
Barry Windsor-Smith to form
The Studio, a shared loft in Manhattan where the group would pursue creative products outside the constraints of comic book commercialism. Though he continued to produce sequential art, Wrightson at this time began producing artwork for numerous posters, prints, calendars, and even a highly detailed coloring book,
The Monsters. He also drew sporadic comics stories and single illustrations for
National Lampoon magazine from 1973 to 1983. Wrightson also used a period style, saying "I wanted the book to look like an antique; to have the feeling of woodcuts or steel engravings, something of that era" and basing the feel on artists like
Franklin Booth,
J.C. Coll and
Edwin Austin Abbey.
Frankenstein was an unpaid project, Wrightson describing it as a "labor of love" he worked on over seven years. The
Freakshow graphic novel, written by
Bruce Jones and illustrated (via pen, brush, and ink with watercolors) by Wrightson, was published in Spain in 1982 and serialized in
Heavy Metal magazine in the early 1980s. This led to several other collaborations with King, including illustrations for the novella "
Cycle of the Werewolf", the restored edition of King's apocalyptic horror epic,
The Stand, and
Wolves of the Calla, the fifth installment of King's
Dark Tower series. He would later illustrate the cover for
TV Guide magazine's April 26 – May 2, 1997, issue, illustrating the TV miniseries of King's
The Shining. During production on the 1984 film
Ghostbusters, Wrightson was among the artists hired by associate producer
Michael C. Gross to provide
concept art envisioning the ghosts and other psychic phenomena encountered by that film's characters. The artwork he contributed included images of the "escapees" from the Ghostbusters' electrically powered ghost storage facility, which run amok after the facility's electricity is turned off.
Jim Starlin and Wrightson produced
Heroes for Hope, a 1985 one-shot designed to raise money for African famine relief and recovery. Published in the form of a "
comic jam", the book featured an all-star lineup of comics creators as well as a few notable authors from outside the comic book industry, such as Stephen King,
George R. R. Martin,
Harlan Ellison, and
Edward Bryant. In 1986, Wrightson and writer Susan K. Putney collaborated on the
Spider-Man: Hooky graphic novel. That same year saw Wrightson and Starlin produce a second benefit comic,
Heroes Against Hunger featuring
Superman and
Batman which was published by DC and like the earlier Marvel project featured many top comics creators. Starlin and Wrightson collaborated on two
miniseries in 1988,
The Weird and
Batman: The Cult, as well as
Marvel Graphic Novel #29 (featuring the
Hulk and the
Thing) and
Punisher P.O.V. for Marvel. Wrightson brought back his Captain Sternn character in 1993 for the
Captain Sternn: Running Out of Time miniseries, published by Kitchen Sink Press. Wrightson again worked with
Punisher for the
Punisher: Purgatory limited series from 1998 to 1999. The series was unusual for incorporating supernatural elements in a Punisher story. He illustrated and contributed album covers for a number of bands and musical artists, including
Meat Loaf. Wrightson did concept art for film and television, working on productions including
The Faculty,
Galaxy Quest,
Spider-Man,
The Mist,
Land of the Dead, and
Serenity. In 2012, Wrightson collaborated with
Steve Niles on
Frankenstein Alive, Alive! published by
IDW Publishing, for which he won a
National Cartoonists Society's award. ==Personal life==