As yet, neither Fox nor Schwartz are saying whether the new movie, X-Men: First Class will be a retro look at younger versions of familiar characters (like the Marvel comic of the same name), or a new team of mutants that follows on from the events of X-Men: The Last Stand (a la the comic Young X-Men). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Young writer Marc Guggenheim would prefer the latter, as he told MTV's Splash Page blog:

What movie would you rather see? There’s more in the next generation than the junior versions of the very first group, now that you already have movies where they’re established as adults. Do a sequel, not a prequel.

First Class comic writer Jeff Parker doesn't think that it's really about any characters in particular as much as it is a central concept, as he also told MTV:

To me, the heart of it is that young people who were different found others like themselves and for once, they didn't feel like freaks.

We agree... and with such a wide variety of unexplored mutants already in Marvel's library, we've come up with five that we'd like to see hit the big screen big time.

Cannonball
Call me old-fashioned, but there's just something oddly charming about a superhero whose only power is flying and crashing into things. It helps that Sam Guthrie is the sort of character whose intentions are good, even if he's not always the smartest guy in the room - Give High School Musical's Zac Efron the role and get that all important Disney Demographic interested.

Dazzler
It's Britney, but with superpowers. Who can resist the lure of a pop star who's also secretly a superhero - and whose powers rely on turning pulsing pop beats into laser light shows? So what if she's still stuck in the '80s despite numerous attempts to update her? She's the closest thing Marvel have to a mutant Miley Cyrus, and in terms of potential crossover marketing dollars, that can only be a good thing.

Pixie
Every X-Men movie needs a point of view character, and now that Rogue has spent three movies in the spotlight - or, really, one movie in the spotlight and then been drawn more and more towards the background in each successive installment - why not give Pixie a chance to shine? The brand-new X-Man (She officially joined the book in this year's Uncanny X-Men #500) is pretty much a clone of former teen POV character Kitty Pryde, right down to demonic weapon made out of her soul or something, to please the old school fanbase, plus she looks like a fairy, which'll bring in the Harry Potter crowd. It's win-win. Unless you happen to have something against things with wings.

Northstar
Despite Marvel continually killing off different versions of the character, there's too much potential in Canada's second-most-popular mutant (The movie Wolverine is still Canadian, right?) to keep him from the silver screen for too long. I mean, he's Marvel's first openly gay superhero, who also happens to be an Olympic gold medalist champion skier - no, really - and an asshole with superspeed powers. If Josh Schwartz really can't do something with that, then I want to know who really wrote all of those OC episodes I adored.

Xorn
This one's more unexpected, I admit. In fact, I'm not even sure if Xorn even officially exists in X-Lore anymore - He was (spoiler) a fake identity used by Magneto in Grant Morrison's run on the series early this decade, and later retconned into a real person whose identity had been stolen by Magneto, but I have no idea if that's just been quietly ignored these days or not. But nonetheless, there was something magnetic - no pun intended - about the silent, naive buddhist with a black hole for a head, and making him a character in his own right could provide an interesting counterpoint to the lights and violence that'll otherwise seep through the movie.

Moore, who's become an unexpected spokesman for the gay superhero fanbase following the release of his novel Hero - which centers around a

I remember when Northstar was killed, a friend of mine who writes for TV but used to write for comics, Alan Heinberg – I begged him to make two of those Young Avengers gay. Begged him. Begged him... [and t]hey did! They did. But originally, one of them wasn’t going to be a guy – the Hulkling. He wound up doing the couple and did a great job with it, but now he’s writing Gray’s Anatomy and other things. He’s a great writer and I’d like to see him do more comics, but he’s making more money doing writing in Hollywood.

NRAMA: I remember seeing the first pictures of the Young Avengers and thinking Hulkling was just a really butch female...

PM: He was, originally!

After-the-fact gender reassignment may not be entirely unheard of in superhero comics, but even though would've meant that Marvel would've been robbed of their two flagship gay characters - instead of Northstar, their previous solo gay character who had almost singlehandedly created the idea that the company was homophobic through many years of mistreatment, including a somewhat embarrassing "He isn't gay! He's actually a fairy! No, with wings and everything!" backtracking and being murdered twice - I personally wish that we'd seen the character stay with his original gender. Not because superhero comics need a non-femme superheroine, but because then we would've been spared a character having to be named "Teddy."

Perry Moore II: Looking At The Gay Landscape [Newsarama]