Is "V" for victory? The much-promoted alien-invasion series premieres tonight on ABC and, according to Los Angeles Times television critic Mary McNamara, the pilot (like that smooth-talking alien lady) seems like the best thing to arrive on Earth in a long time. Here's an excerpt of her review. -- Geoff Boucher

Some story lines just never get old — star-crossed lovers, mistaken identity, lizard men from outer space.

It’s impossible to tiptoe around the main plot device of ABC’s “V” — those aliens may be smart and purty but they’re up to no good — because it is, of course, a remake of the 1983 miniseries. And even if it weren’t, writers Kenneth Johnson and Scott Peters have infused the pilot with as many sly sci-fi references as CG special effects. [For the record: The review of the television series “V” in Tuesday’s Calendar said the pilot was written by Kenneth Johnson and Scott Peters. As the writer of the original miniseries, Johnson was given a “story by” credit. Peters wrote the pilot.]

Which are pretty terrific, as is the pilot in general. Although fans of the first “V” may find themselves longing for Richard Herd’s Supreme Commander in his jaunty jumpsuit and funky glasses, this “V” is not only sleeker, faster and more visually gripping, it promises to be thematically more compelling.

Its opening sequence is a masterpiece of back-story compression. What appears to be a temblor startles a series of characters (and an almost flawless cast gathered from various sci-fi hits): Erica Evans (“Lost’s” Elizabeth Mitchell) is an anti-terrorism agent with the FBI and divorced mother of Tyler (Logan Huffman), a basically decent but rebellious teen. Chad Decker (Scott Wolf from “Party of Five”) is a newscaster who aspires to do more than “read the news”; Father Jack Landry (Joel Gretsch of “The 4400”) is a young priest working among the homeless; and Ryan Nichols (Morris Chestnut) has just purchased the engagement ring he hopes to offer Valerie (Lourdes Benedicto).

All of their plans are put on hold, however, when the quake turns out to be the arrival of an enormous spaceship, one of a matched set now hovering over all the major cities of the world. But even as the throngs prepare for the requisite scream-flee-and-die scene of mass hysteria, the underbelly of the craft becomes a screen and the lovely Anna (“Firefly’s” Morena Baccarin) assures everyone in flawless English (and French and Egyptian) that “the Visitors” are here to offer technology in exchange for a few undisclosed but very renewable resources, and they come in peace.

Undone by relief, Anna’s Audrey Hepburn haircut and the promise that the Visitors can cure 65 of our diseases, humans, or at least New Yorkers, neglect to consider that they are a renewable resource themselves. Like the gullible little oysters in “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” they quickly embrace the “V’s,” signing up for theme-park-like tours of the ship and, of course, merchandising like crazy. Fortunately, not everyone is convinced...

THERE'S MORE, READ THE REST

-- Geoff Boucher

Elizabeth Mitchell, unlikely action hero for "V" and "Lost"

Elizabeth Mitchell on shady motivations

Original "V" creator Kenneth Johnson returns to reptiles

Watch the first nine minutes of "V" pilot

"FlashForward" may actually be awful

"FlashForward" arrives with "Lost"-like expectations

"FlashForward" team downplays "Lost" comparisons

Photo credit: ABC

Welcome to Everyday Hero, your roundup of handpicked headliens from across the fanboy universe...

"GRAVEYARD" WINS NEWBERY: Congrats are in order for Neil Gaiman, whose latest work has been awarded the Newbery Medal. Here's the announcement: "The 2009 Newbery Medal winner is 'The Graveyard Book' by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean, and published by HarperCollins Children's Books. A delicious mix of murder, fantasy, humor and human longing, the tale of Nobody Owens is told in magical, haunting prose. A child marked for death by an ancient league of assassins escapes into an abandoned graveyard, where he is reared and protected by its spirit denizens. 'A child named Nobody, an assassin, a graveyard and the dead are the perfect combination in this deliciously creepy tale, which is sometimes humorous, sometimes haunting and sometimes surprising,' said Newbery Committee Chair Rose V. Treviño." Over at his online journal, Gaiman has a fun account of how he got the big news: "I was not yet sure what was going on or who was trying to do what. It was 5:45 in the morning. No-one had died, though, I was fairly certain of that. My cell-phone rang. 'Hello. This is Rose Trevino. I'm chair of the ALA Newbery Committee...' Oh. Newbery. Right. Cool. I may be an honors book or something. That would be nice, 'and I have the voting members of the Newbery Committee here, and we want to tell you that your book...' 'THE GRAVEYARD BOOK,' said fourteen loud voices, and I thought, I may be still  asleep right now, but they probably don't do this, probably don't call people and sound so amazingly excited, for Honors books....'...just won...' 'THE NEWBERY MEDAL' they chorused. They sounded really happy. I checked the hotel room because it seemed very likely that I was still fast asleep. It all looked reassuringly solid. You are on a speakerphone with at least 14 teachers and librarians and suchlike great, wise and good people, I thought. Do not start swearing like you did when you got the Hugo. This was a wise thing to think because otherwise huge, mighty and fourletter swears were gathering. I mean, that's what they're for." VIDEO EXTRA: Want to see a trailer for "The Graveyard Book" and hear Gaiman reading from "Graveyard"? Go to the end of this post....

JEEZ, THIS GUY AGAIN?: OK, it was cool when there was a graphic novel biography of Barack Obama (especially since it was very well done) and it was fun when Alex Ross drew that picture of Obama in superhero mode. It was also kinda endearing to find out that the 44th president is a Conan the Barbarian fan and everybody certainly got excited when the new president showed up in the pages of Spider-Man but, well, can we just tone down at this presidential fanboy stuff for awhile? Apparently not. There's a fourth printing of the comic book issue featuring the meeting between Savage Dragon and Obama, which I believe was the first comic-book appearance by a politico in a nationally distributed comic book. Matthew Brady at Newsarama has the scoop on it. Considering that Spider-Man issue also flew off of shelves in multiple printings, I'm guessing we haven't seen the last comic book cover featuring the new leader of the free world. I'm hoping for an Obama team-up with Herbie the Fat Fury. UPDATE: Wow, so Eric Larsen, the creator of Savage Dragon, is more than a little miffed at Marvel and says they stole his approach, some of his ideas and a lot of his thunder when Spidey met Obama. You can read his rant here and a Marvel editor's rebuttal here. What's my take? Well I pretty much loathe all gimmicky superheroes-meet-contemporary-famous-people issues because they always read like those old wretched Radio Shack comics with Superman. So I'll just sit this one out...

A "HORNET'S" NEST: I had lunch with some of the Industrial Light & Magic folks at a great place called Magnolia over on Sunset Boulevard and while we were talking about Jim Cameron's "Avatar" we heard a distinctive laugh at the next table -- we knew it was Seth Rogen before we even looked over. I debated the idea of going over before his food arrived and asking a question or two about "The Green Hornet" but I opted not to because, well, who wants to bug a guy while he's relaxing at lunch? Anyway, there's been much discussion of "Hornet" after the strange doings with Stephen Chow who was brought in as Kato, then helped steer the all-action film into a comedy project, signed on as director and then quit that job over creative differences -- but differences that weren't intense enough for him to abandon the Kato role. Got all that? Rogen is the co-writer of the film and the title character and while the project helped him get in trim shape, it's not yet clear what else he is accomplishing with it. (I also heard a random rumor about the 'Hornet' film: Two different people in the industry told me that Adam Sandler has a brief but key role in the movie as a certain surprise superhero...I heard which one, too, but I don't want to ruin it. Sandler and Rogen have another project together as well.) With all the fits and starts it's no wonder we keep reading things like this dispatch from Drew McWeeny: "It looks like 'The Green Hornet' is about to collapse again, and if this particular configuration doesn't happen, then I suspect it never will. Ever since Stephen Chow started to waffle about his participation in the film, I've been hearing rumors that there were major hesitations at Sony.  Then at Sundance, I heard several people say that the film was off completely.  I spoke this afternoon with a source close to the film, and while they didn't call it completely dead, they did say it is 'highly unlikely' that the film will shoot in 2009 at all." [Hit Fix]

LEAPING LIZARDS, IT'S "V": Last month we brought you an in-depth look at the past and future of the classic TV sci-fi epic "V" and here's an update via a blurb in one of the trades: "ABC is flashing the 'V' sign.The network has given a pilot order to a reimagining of the 1980s miniseries about an alien invasion. Written on spec by '4400' co-creator/exec producer Scott Peters, the new 'V' will center on a female Homeland Security agent. Peters is exec producing the pilot with HDFilms principal Jason Hall. Two ABC pilots picked up so far this pilot season are presold titles based on 1980s properties, 'The Witches of Eastwick' and 'V.'" [Hollywood Reporter]

RANDOM  PLUG: I covered the Screen Actors Guild Awards last night and had a great time backstage. You can read the story here if you like that kind of stuff.

THIS JUST IN...SUPERMAN EXISTS AND HE'S AMERICAN: Here's yet another "Watchmen" video for your enjoyment. Considering all the ancillary videos that have been cooked up for the movie (and, of course, "The Black Freighter" featurette) I'm predicting now that the "Watchmen" Blu-ray will be a pretty staggering package...

ON THIS DATE: Comic book artist Silvio "Sal" Buscema is celebrating his 72nd birthday today. Sal got his start in the 1960s as inker for his brother, John Buscema, and Sal came into his own with long runs of work on "The Incredible Hulk," "Captain America," "Spectacular Spider-Man" and one of my faves, "The Defenders." Sal was a utility player in the Marvel bullpen often doing emergency fill-in issues and inking others between doing his own pencil and ink work and while he is considered more steady than spectacular by fans, his style really evolved through the years and his knack for clear storytelling was a key part of the Marvel glory years.

Kenneth Johnson was one of the more successful science-fiction creators in television in the 1970s and early 1980s after working as a producer on "The Six Million Dollar Man," creating the character of Jamie Summers, the "The Bionic Woman," and creating the popular television adaptation of "The Incredible Hulk." But his greatest success came in May of 1983 with the unsettling miniseries "V," which became one of the high points in the history of science fiction television.

"V" tells the tale of human-looking (at least for a while) aliens who come to earth and present themselves as benefactors but actually have something else on their minds: dinner. Johnson created a story that had a tense, simmering quality to it, and the Nazi echoes of the alien campaign on earth added a dark depth to the miniseries. There is a stirring of interest in "V"; a new edition of the novelization of the miniseries is back in bookstores, and a sequel from Tor Books, written by Johnson and titled "V: The Second Generation," hit shelves earlier this year. There's also  talk of either a film or television series revival of the property, although not all of these projects are dovetailing in a tidy way.

Lee Margulies, a writer and editor at the Los Angeles Times since the 1970s, wrote about the show and its creator when "V" first aired. Margulies got back in touch with Johnson for this Hero Complex Q&A about a sci-fi story that continues to shed new skin some 25 years after it first grabbed the attention of the world.

LM: Incredibly, it's been 25 years since the original "V" aired. What are your memories of it?

KJ: The speed at which "V" happened was amazing: I literally told [then-NBC Entertainment chief] Brandon Tartikoff the story in his office; he approved it in the room; I wrote the 230-page script in 19 days; he read it overnight and greenlighted it. NBC was in trouble and needed "V" quickly. My prep time should have been three months but was only two and a half weeks! "V" became the No. 1 show in America, got NBC’s highest rating in over two years, a staggering 40 share, 80 million viewers -- and well over 200 million more when it aired overseas, beating the Olympics two to one. Plus it was critically acclaimed by all the major reviewers. All incredibly rewarding for me as a writer-director.

LM: Do people still ask you about it?

KJ: Constantly. I get swamped at such gatherings as Comic-Con [International in San Diego]. I put an e-mail address on the DVD released a few years ago, and I’ve received tens of thousands of notes from wonderful people around the world -- all wanting more. Warner Home Video thought the DVD would be a cult item, selling maybe 15,000 units. It sold that many on the first day on Amazon alone. It has now sold over 2.5 million units for revenue of $50 million.

LM: What was the key to its success?

KJ: "V" is a timeless story of resistance against tyrannical oppression. It was never about big spaceships and aliens. "V" was about power: ruthless people who possessed power, those who sucked up to it, and those everyday people who risked their lives to fight against the abuse of power. Though I based much of it on happenings in World War II, "V" also has resonance of Apartheid, the American Revolution and Spartacus’ revolt of the slaves. That historical underpinning gives "V" a depth and substance that helped to make it, as some reviewers noted, an instant classic.

LM: Of course, the initial sequel in 1984, "V: The Final Battle," and the subsequent, short-lived "V" series were not so well received. But you weren't involved in those.

KJ: Though I supervised the writing of that 6-hour sequel, I left Warners over creative differences before it was produced. To this day I have never seen it, except for one minute by accident -- in which I saw them make every wrong choice possible, so I knew I'd never survive watching the entire thing.

LM: Why do you think people would be interested in another sequel all these years later?

KJ: Because the themes and allegories of "V" were so enduring, they naturally lent themselves to further exploration. My original brilliant cast and crew helped me to create nuanced characters that people could deeply identify with. Audiences clearly wanted more. And the idea of exploring what the world looked like 20 years later was intriguing to me.