"Stardust" was originally conceived by Gaiman and Vess as a "story book with pictures", created by both, to be published by American company DC Comics. During an interview to be included in the audio book, Neil Gaiman explained how one day while driving he had seen a wall on the side of the road and had conceived the idea of Faerie being behind the wall. This sparked an idea in Gaiman's head about an American novelist who moved to England where he would find out about this wall; at this time, the book was to be called "Wall". Soon afterwards, Gaiman was nominated for a literary award, which he won, and at a celebratory party for the award he saw a shooting star and immediately came up with the idea of "Stardust". Gaiman dragged Vess out of a party that he was at and outlined the plot to him and Vess agreed to do the illustrations. Initially, "Stardust" was released in 1997 as a prestige format four-issue comic mini-series. "Stardust" came out once a month in a square-bound, high-gloss booklet with high grade paper, high quality color and no advertisements.