University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate Van Jensen published his latest book “Godfall” on Nov. 1. Jensen has been a comic book and graphic novel author, with some of his work featured in DC Comics. “Godfall” is his debut novel.
The science-fiction novel “Godfall” tells the story of an “asteroid,” which ends up being a more human-like entity, landing outside Little Springs, Nebraska, and turning the town into a metropolitan area taken over by a top-secret government research site. The story follows a sheriff who grew up in the town and wants to keep peace while these events take over and change Little Springs.
“Godfall” will be adapted into a TV series, picked up by director Ron Howard after being in a bidding war amongst Hollywood, which was announced on Oct. 27. Howard has worked on films such as Jim Carrey’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “A Beautiful Mind.”
Jensen is a Daily Nebraskan alum and started out doing coverage over softball. Jensen said working with the staff at The Daily Nebraskan challenged him to practice writing almost every day and there was a lot of competition over who could write the best, which encouraged him.
“It’s about doing the work and continuing to try to get a little bit better every day,” Jensen said.
Jensen taught himself to be a creative writer. After he graduated from college, he went on to work for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette as a crime reporter, but he said that he had always wanted to do creative things.
Jensen said that he had a friend who was an artist and asked if Jensen could write a graphic novel while he drew it. This got him his start in the graphic novel business. When following this project, Jensen got an offer from DC Comics to write a “Green Lantern” comic. After working for DC Comics, Jensen began to work on his own original projects.
“I always wanted to write a novel,” Jensen said. “It just took me a bit to have the time to get to it.”
Jensen first came up with the idea when he had a sort of vision of something falling out of the sky. From there, it took him about a year of thinking about his idea and the surrounding universe until he wrote the first draft, which took him about three months.
Jensen will be an executive producer on the show, working with Howard, Brian Grazer and Kristen Zolner from Imagine TV. Jensen said it would be cool to work with such accomplished Hollywood people like Howard and learn about making a TV show.
“To see (the text on the page) come to life as a video is going to be really cool,” Jensen said.
Jensen said that he hopes to see a more realistic portrayal of rural communities because there is a lot of media that marginalizes and stereotypes them. He said out of all the things, he is most excited to see western Nebraska with a giant alien life form along the horizon on screen.
“I’m a big believer that the book is the book,” Jensen said. “I’m not precious about it needing to be a certain way or that (the adaptation) has to follow (the book) exactly.”