Interview: Van Jensen on Crafting a Unique Godzilla Heist Story

Over the holiday break, I had the opportunity to interview Van Jensen, a writer who has been a vital presence in the comic book industry for several years. Known for his work across both comics and novels, including work on The Flash, Green Lantern, and James Bond, Jensen joined me to discuss his most recent miniseries, Godzilla: Heist (2025), which is now available in trade paperback. Our conversation focused on what defines strong comic book writing, as well as the importance of collaboration.

Godzilla: Heist was first announced on October 18th, 2024, at New York Comic Con, alongside Mothra: Queen of the Monsters and Godzilla vs. America. The series was developed in collaboration with editor Jake Williams, interior artwork was brought to life by Kelsey Ramsay, and cover art was illustrated by Bob Eggleton.

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Joseph Acosta: Hello, KU! Today I’m here with Van Jensen, a writer you may know from his work on Green Lantern, The Flash, and James Bond. And now, he’s the mind behind the new comic run Godzilla: Heist, which is hitting shelves in a collected volume in early January 2026. Van, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you doing?

VJ: I’m doing well. Thanks for having me!

JA: What was your personal relationship with Godzilla and the franchise before working on this book?

VJ: So I’m certainly, you know, never going to claim to be a Godzilla completist. I was pretty young. But I mean, it was probably before I was ten that I watched the originals with my dad. I grew up in a movie theater family. It was this is a very small town, so the movie theater dated back to the silent film era.

But then it had shut down in the 70s before I was born. But I grew up watching the old movies that had been in the theater way, way back. So, the classic Godzilla was one of the ones that we watched. I loved it. I was so taken by it; it was so much more interesting than basically all of the Western creature features, and just so much more nuanced, more compelling character action going on, and so much more dramatic.

It was just this incredibly cool thing, as it’s a giant monster; it has that innate cool factor. And then over the years, I would watch some stuff here and there. I was high school age when the 1998 Godzilla movie, which was so terrible, came out. I mainly just remember the ridiculous soundtrack that it had, where it was like, every song they overlaid Godzilla screams on the audio tracks. I think I owned that soundtrack at one point. I’ve watched the more recent movies and animated stuff, too. I’m just trying to catch a good bit of it.

JA: With a heist being such a specific genre, which made it feel the right fit for a character like Godzilla, did the concept begin with the human characters and the mechanics of the heist, or was Godzilla always an integral part of the story from the start?

VJ: I had done a book called Arca with IDW, and Jake Williams, the current editor of the Godzilla line, was the assistant editor on Arca. When he took over the Godzilla line of books, he asked me, “Hey, would you want to write Godzilla or something?” And I said, “You know, I don’t really have any ideas… what about like, a heist set during a Godzilla attack?”

That was all I really had…Because I think there are some Godzilla comics where Godzilla is the main protagonist, but you can’t really characterize Godzilla. Godzilla isn’t emoting that much, so you can’t really set character stakes for the creature, and it’s tough to manage the tension. So I was thinking… “What’s something that’s very human level that can take place within a Godzilla story?” So basically, Godzilla: Heist was the pitch. And Jake [Williams] immediately said, “Oh, yeah, that’s really cool. Let’s do it.” So from there, it became: “Who are the characters? What’s the heist? What’s the goal? How does Godzilla interplay in it?” And trying to do that, hopefully in a satisfying way, that you kind of progressed from a very clean heist story to a big kaiju battle at the end.

JA: Since comics are a collaborative medium, what role did the editor, Jake Williams, play in shaping the story from the early ideas through the final run? Did his feedback ever take the story in a direction that you hadn’t considered?

VJ: Jake’s great! He’s one of my favorite editors that I’ve worked with. We were very collaborative. We were having phone conversations and hashing stuff out, and I would come up with some ideas, and he would add on. There was a lot of improv…we were like, “Oh, yes. And what about this?” and “Yes! And what about this?” I think he steered a lot of the story arc; there’s a big emotional story arc for the main character. Jake was a great resource on saying, “Okay, let’s always touch back on that line. Let’s always keep that character journey, that emotional arc in the foreground, so that we don’t lose that in all of the action and monster attacks.”

JA: Many Godzilla stories positioned humanity as either victims of destruction or antagonists, perpetuating the folly and carelessness of man. Where did you want the human cast in Godzilla: Heist to fall on that spectrum?

VJ: Great question. The main character, GI, is essentially like the second generation of a family that was victimized by Godzilla. A family that was in a city where there was a huge attack, devastation, people dying, and all of that. I think, as you said, in most Godzilla stories, it’s one or the other that people fall into on those camps. And so what I wanted to do is look at sort of, well, for someone who has like one degree more distance from Godzilla, where would they go?

So, for the main character, he is really more interested in his family’s legacy, and that’s really what he’s chasing after. And part of that legacy is doing something to defeat Godzilla. But defeating Godzilla is really secondary to restoring his mother to what he felt like was the esteem that she deserved, because it’s really his mother who had worked to create something to be able to kill Godzilla.

JA: Was there a point in the story that turned out to be much harder to execute than you initially expected?

VJ: Interestingly, the highest highs are very complicated. There are all these movements. There are all kinds of stuff. This is a heist that’s during a Godzilla attack in London, taking place in Whitechapel, which is the British Defense Ministry where they’re located. So it’s one of the most secure places on Earth, right? So the idea is like, the only way you can get inside the place is if it’s during the Godzilla attack. So that was just incredibly complicated.

But actually, in the final issue, we get to have a giant monster battle, and in my head, it was like, “Oh, this is just going to be super easy! It’s almost like a Rock Em’ Sock Em’ Robots scenario, just beat them up.” But actually, that giant fight sequence was probably the hardest thing to write, probably because I also wanted to make sure I was hitting the emotional beats within this big fight.

JA: What can you do with a heist comic that can’t be done in a heist film? What advantages does the medium provide?

VJ: Film gives you information for all of your senses, except for touch and smell. You’re really getting this complete picture. And then, like a prose novel, you’re really having to take the words on the page and translate them into a visual. Comics are this great middle ground, and one of the cool things with comics is, because you have panels, you always have to leave out moments, because there’s always the moment that happened between the two panels. So that’s something that you can play with: What information do you leave out to hide stuff from readers or keep them guessing?

And then the other thing is just that it’s way easier to draw a giant, crazy thing than it is to film a giant, crazy thing. It didn’t cost $200 million to make this book, whereas if it were a movie, that’s probably what the budget would be.

JA: Since the story relies heavily on visual storytelling, how closely did you collaborate with artist Kelsey Ramsay throughout the process? Was there a moment that you intentionally pulled back on the dialogue to let the art do some heavy lifting?

VJ: Kelsey was great. We collaborated very closely. She’s such a good collaborator, such a good thinker, and always coming up with new ideas. The artist is the visual professional, they’re going to have the best and most interesting approach to things. I always want to leave space for that and encourage that.

Also, just asking an artist, “What’s cool stuff that you want to draw? Because if you tell me, I’ll put it in there.” I think it was very, very smooth. A lot of it was interesting choices in framing that she made, always keeping a human point of view on Godzilla. Your perspective is mostly on the ground looking up, with Godzilla towering over you, rather than being way zoomed out. She just nailed it.

JA: Since Godzilla is a beloved IP, what creative flexibility did you have, and where do the limitations come into play? Like, say, with Mechagodzilla, or with the human characters?

VJ: Toho was great. You have different experiences with different licensors. For example, I wrote at DC Comics for many years. Sometimes you can do whatever you want, and sometimes you are really, really controlled, and there are sort of like the tiniest little things. They [Toho] basically said, “Hey, it should be one of these two versions of Mechagodzilla, so just make sure that you visually base it on this. Also, here are all the references that you need.”

With Godzilla, there were two things that I got notes on. One, in a script I referred to in passing to Godzilla being green. Toho was very quick to say, “Godzilla is not green. You never refer to Godzilla as green.” And then the other thing: I have one moment where Godzilla eats someone, but it was like, not really clear that Godzilla had eaten someone. It was more of a “you get the picture” sort of thing. And I was told that I could not show Godzilla eating humans. I don’t know if Godzilla, like, doesn’t eat humans or if it’s, you know, a matter of taste. We certainly have plenty of violence, but Godzilla does not eat humans.

JA: If someone wants to break into comics, how important is the collaboration process compared to just pure writing skills?

VJ: The thing is, if you want to break into comics, the easiest way to do it is to be someone who can write and draw. Because then, you can just do your own thing. If you can’t write and draw, then collaboration is just everything. There are a couple of things I always tell people. One is if you’re a writer and you want to make comics, you should just start making your own comics. And even if you can only draw stick figures, you should still do it. Even that exercise of just drawing with stick figures is going to teach you all the stuff that will really make artists.

Because there’s just unintentional stuff that, if you aren’t thinking visually, you’re going to ask an artist to do impossible stuff, like having one panel where two separate things happen, like a guy takes his jacket off and lights a cigar and takes his hat off. It’s like, does this guy have six arms? You literally can’t show that. So that’s part of it.

And then the other thing I would say is, when you write a comic book script, you have to think of it as if you are writing a letter to the artist. And it’s not like, hey, here’s some assembly guide to putting this thing together, like paint-by-numbers. It’s closer to an opening sort of conversation about how to create something together and leave space for the artist to come back to you within that.

JA: When did storytelling and writing first feel like something you wanted to pursue seriously?

VJ: It was really there from the beginning. My mom still has drawings that I did where I was making my own little cartoons when I was like three. So, pretty much from the point that I could pick up a pencil. I grew up kind of out of the middle of nowhere, so I really didn’t have access to the industry, and I instead went into journalism.

I was a crime reporter and a freelance editor for a lot of magazines. And then it was kind of a little bit later that I realized, now I really want to tell stories, and tell fictional stories. That was when I started working on novels or working on comics, and then just sort of just kind of stubbornly kept at it since then.

JA: How has your approach to writing changed as you’ve taken on projects such as The Flash, Green Lantern, and now Godzilla?

VJ: I mean, every project is kind of the same in some ways and different in some ways. I’m a big believer that storytelling and writing are different disciplines. Storytelling is really kind of the same thing from thing to thing and medium to medium, in regards to saying, like, there are ways that stories work and that they make sense, and there are things that don’t really work in storytelling.

Step one is always figuring out what the story that I’m telling, how I am telling it, and outlining. But really, I’m letting the characters be the leading voice of where the story goes and always having character choice dictate what happens in the action rather than action dictating characters and then writing in.

Writing is a very different thing. I write comics, novels, and I write for TV. All of these things are totally different. And even writing The Flash is completely different from writing Godzilla, because the editors and companies are different. What works for one character, and sort of what that character’s fan bases expect from said character, is different from one to the next. I think doing lots of stuff across mediums, I mean, it, I don’t know, it keeps me engaged. I think I would get pretty bored pretty fast if I just wrote the same thing again and again and again.

JA: How different is the writing process for novels and comics? Is it because comics have an already set universe, or is it because novels are all original?

VJ: When you write comic books, you’re writing a script. So it’s really that you’re listing things out. It’s like, okay, page one, panel one. Here’s where we are, here’s the characters, what they’re doing, what they’re saying, what’s happening in the emotions. You have to think visually, but it’s really just trying to describe the stuff that I see and the stuff that’s happening.

A ton of the work is actually sort of engineering, thinking about how much fits on each page, and how all of that keeps a good flow. There are a million panels where the artist is drawing such small details, but there are also big panels with a giant like Godzilla in it, right? The challenge there is the balance between the two.

With novel writing, it’s both very free and kind of terrifying. The worst comic script in the hands of the best artist is still going to make a pretty good comic, just because art is the thing that really makes comic books sing. Whereas when I’m writing a novel, I don’t have anyone to cover my ass, so to speak. The words…either they’re good, or they’re not. So you have to put so much more thought into making each paragraph its own little work of art; being very deliberate with word choice, literary devices, and setting your rules of how you want to write and abide by them throughout the course of that project.

The great thing about writing a novel is… with comic books, the art takes a really long time. With movies and TV, you write a script, and it takes forever and ever for it to turn into something. But when you write a novel, you write the ending, and it’s just done. That’s it. I don’t need anyone else to turn it into the finished thing.

JA: What do you hope for longtime Godzilla fans or brand new readers to ultimately take away from Godzilla: Heist?

VJ: Ultimately, I hope that anyone who comes upon it finds that they care about the characters and are caught in the characters’ journey. If they are, then great! And if they aren’t, then I didn’t do my job well enough. I’m not trying to, like, blow apart the Godzilla mythos or do anything crazy. I love Godzilla! I was really honored to get a chance to play in the sandbox, so to speak. I hope that I have left a little bit of legacy that people enjoy, and are like, “Hey, there was a heist story set in the universe of Godzilla that was really cool and interesting.” If that’s it, then that’s great.

JA: What can we expect next from Van Jensen? What are you currently working on?

VJ: I have a novel coming out the same day as Godzilla: Heist called Godfall. It might be tangentially related. It’s about a giant, three mile long alien alien that drops out of the sky and seems to be dead in this little town of Nebraska. And then it’s really about how the outside world descends on this small town, and the sheriff of the town, who just wanted to be the sheriff of his own little hometown, now has to deal with 100,000 outsiders and the military and cults and spies and all of that stuff. Then there’s also a murderer loose in this town.

So it’s really like a murder mystery, with this sci-fi kaiju backstop to it. I’m really excited about that book! It’s being adapted into a TV show, and Ron Howard is attached to direct it. I’m an executive producer on that. And then I separately sold another original project to a studio for TV that I’m showrunning and producing. I can’t say more than that right now, unfortunately. I’m also writing two sequels to Godfall; those will be out from Grand Central Publishing in the next few years. So, yeah! That’s going to be plenty to keep me busy.

JA: Where can we find you and your work?

VJ: Anyone can find me at vanjensen.com, my official website. I’ve got links there to where you can get the books. I’m on Instagram at vanjensenauthor, too. But I think pretty much all of my stuff is available, you know, wherever books are sold. I particularly always recommend bookshop.org, where you can order online, you can get great prices, and you are ordering from local independent bookshops.

JA: Thank you so much for joining us for this interview!

VJ: Thank you!

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Now collected in a single volume, Godzilla: Heist offers a bold and unique spin on the legendary franchise. Whether you followed the series issue by issue or are discovering it for the first time, this trade paperback delivers a complete and thrilling addition to Godzilla’s legacy. Godzilla: Heist is now available at local comic shops, major book retailers, and online.