While providing spot illustrations for Playboy's music page, Ricketts befriended underground cartoonist Skip Williamson who encouraged him to pursue a career in comics.

According to his website, his wife walked down the aisle wearing a red dress and carrying black flowers while an Elvis impersonator sang a slow version of "Viva Las Vegas."

In 2000, Image published the graphic novel Nowheresville– a mystery set in 1950s Greenwich Village that combines Beat Generation culture with hard-boiled pulp crime fiction.

He also created a graphic novel for Dark Horse entitled Lazarus Jack and wrote four issues of The Invincible Iron Man for the Avengers Disassembled event.

Over the years, Ricketts has written stories illustrated by Mike Hawthorne, Sean Phillips, Tony Harris, Scott Kolins, Brian Michael Bendis, Eric Wight, Neil Gaiman, Micah Farritor, Mitch O'Connell, Leanne Buckley, Andy Kuhn, Phil Hester, Alex Ross, Mike Mignola, David Mack, Michael Lark, Terry LaBan, Guy Davis, Jim Calafiore, Jay Geldhof, Jill Thompson, Galen Showman, Andrew Robinson and Tim Bradstreet.