Graphic novel takes darker look at Disney classic

If you're a fan of happy puppets and happier-ever-afters – sans murder and cloaked monsters – the latest spin on Pinocchio may not be for you.

Let's just say writer Van Jensen's wacky, violence-laden adaptation includes blood-thirsty vampires and a rather sinister, emotionally unstable puppet.

In Jensen's 120-page graphic novel "Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer," Pinocchio must eradicate an evil league of deviant vampires who have murdered his maker, Geppetto, and mysteriously taken hold of his small, Italian town.

Jensen, a 2004 graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism, called the novel "a totally over-the-top revenge story with a little bit of romance and a lot of violence."

But at its deepest, "Vampire Slayer" is "a story of a character who is forced to grow up very suddenly and deal with his grief at the same time he's trying to save humanity," the 27-year-old Lewellen, Neb., native said.

Clearly, Jensen's dark tale is a drastic departure from writer Carlo Collodi's original and an even further divergence from the light-hearted Disney film.

"Vampire Slayer" basically begins where Collodi's classic leaves off. Well, almost.

Pinocchio, after proving he's worthy, becomes a real boy at the end of Collodi's version. However, in Jensen's adaptation, he remains a puppet – an angry, bionic-looking one at that.

Jensen said the idea of reinventing Pinocchio originated with a co-worker at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper.

One day, graphic artist Dustin Higgins sketched the puppet's nose stabbing a police officer, and from there, the Pinocchio spinoff was born – kind of. It started as a joke, but the fleeting idea eventually grew into something much bigger.

After Jensen moved to Atlanta, Higgins called him "completely out of the blue" and asked if he'd write the script for a story Higgins would illustrate about Pinocchio slaying sharp-toothed monsters with his long, pointy nose.

"I had never really thought of it as something for a book," Jensen said. "I was pretty skeptical about it, but after I heard what (Higgins) had in mind, I could really envision what he was going for."

Together, the duo brainstormed details for the plot, tossing ideas back and forth until they settled on the best ones, they said.

But perhaps the most important detail – that Pinocchio's nose can pierce the vampires and turn them to dust – was there from day one.

"There's the convention of a wooden stake killing vampires, so it's playing off of that," Jensen said.

For each frame, Jensen had to note the setting, the characters' positions, the scene's action and the dialogue before sending it off to Higgins to be illustrated.

Jensen's background as a writer and knowledge of comic books made him a natural fit to script the story, Higgins said.

"He understands meeting deadlines, he's good at editing himself, and he has the experience of reading comics," Higgins said.

The plot and drawings were finalized after about a year and a half of work, Jensen said, after which the duo shopped the finished product around to publishers.

Slave Labor Graphics, a publishing company known for supporting unorthodox comics, "responded very quickly and said they loved it," Jensen said.