BY DAVID SERVER | The X-Men: heroes sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, and now stars of the silver screen. But who are they  and where did they come from? Why, thats easy: comic books! The X-Men originally premiered in Marvels X-Men #1, released in 1963 about young teens struggling to fit in and fight the evil Magneto. Of course, back then it was written by Stan the Man Lee, Marvel founder. But after the X-Men flick came out, the X-Men had to be reintroduced to a new generation of readers. And so Marvel founded the Ultimate line of comics, reintroducing their most popular characters for a new generation. And that roster of characters included the X-Men.

Ultimate X-Men, instantly a smash hit, has successfully rebooted the X-Men franchise with its modern interpretation of comicdoms most famous and popular super-hero team. And who deserves the credit for that success? Writer Mark Millar. I had to chance to check in with Mark, and ask him: if you had the chance to write the sequel to the X-Men movie, how would you do it? Heres what he had to say.

In a nutshell, The Tomorrow People (Millars first 6 issue arc on the Ultimate X-Men, in which the X-Men face off against Magneto and the governments evil Sentinel robots) was really the plot I had in mind for the first X-Men movie based on the advance publicity I'd seen, says Millar. Return to Weapon X (issues 6-12) is really what I'd do if I had the chance to write the sequel.

Essentially, the plot would be split into two different stories, but the main one would be Wolverine's search for his past as he tries to track down the international Weapon X facility. Weapon X is the shady government project that trained and transformed Wolverine into the killing machine that he has become in the movie & comics.

The irony, of course, being that his former captors (who use mutants in the most awful Black Ops terrorist situations) have tracked down Professor X's secret school and raid the place for a whole new squad of unwilling recruits. This is what would pull the plot threads together and allow Wolverine to try to breach the facility and rescue the captive X-Men.

The only difference I think I'd make to the Return to Weapon X story is that I'd have [Sentinel creator] Boliver Trask working for Weapon X and use his Sentinels to raid the school. Sixty foot CGI Sentinels could look incredible in this capacity; quite unlike any other movie monsters we've ever seen before.

What about the X-Roster? Who would Millar add? As happened when I started Ultimate X-Men, the temptation was to flood the book with everyone I've ever liked, but I hope the movie guys play it as nice and slow as they did with the first movie and just introduce a couple of new characters. I'd opt for Beast (because he's so unique and we've never seen anything like him before in cinema) and Colossus (because he's visually incredible and the movie line-up has no-one with this kind of raw power).

And with current reports as they are, Millar may not be far off the mark. The official word from production seems to indicate that the Sentinels (in one form or another) will make an appearance, and that Wolverines past (presumably in the form of the Weapon X program) will also play a prominent role. Beast also seems to stand a good chance of appearing.

Millar says what piqued his interest about the first film is that it didn't seem at all like a standard comic book flick. From the moment we saw the opening scene in the concentration camp, we knew this wasn't going to be Batman and Robin.

But, not being able to write the movie, does Millar trust director Bryan Singers instincts? It would seem so  from what hes heard, he feels what Singers planning sounds really, really interesting, and he plans to sit back and enjoy X-Men 2 as much as he did the first X-Men. Well, Mr. Millar, youll be in good company  all us X-Fans plan to do the same.