During the last four years of his life he was an editor for DC Comics' Vertigo line,[2] working on such titles as Preacher, Doom Patrol, Industrial Gothic, Peter Kuper's The System, and Dhampire.

[3][4] Stathis collaborated with cartoonist Matt Howarth, co-writing the first few issues of Those Annoying Post Bros., published by Vortex Comics in 1985.

In 1989, Stathis wrote The Venus Interface (originally advertised as Interzone: The Wild & Curious Times of Sheldon Zone), a Heavy Metal graphic novel with a cover by Olivia De Berardinis and interior art by Jim Fletcher, Rick Geary, Peter Kuper, Mark Pacella, Kenneth Smith, Arthur Suydam and Michael Uman.

At Heavy Metal and Reflex, we would feature side-by-side profiles of guys like Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart, The Residents, Sun Ra, Voivod, Ice Cube, Francis Coppola, David Cronenberg, Susan Sontag (by Samuel R. Delany), James Ellroy (by Lewis Shiner), Kathy Acker, Neil Gaiman (who also interviewed Lou Reed for us), Alan Moore, Moebius, Brian Bolland, and Dave McKean––as if they all deserved commensurate attention (they do).

The idea was––and still is––that it's all in the mix, and to erect barriers between, say, comics and music, to ignore the noise from any part of the system, is counterproductive and just plain stupid.