MARVEL PRESS CONFERENCE: PTOLUS: CITY BY THE SPIRE'S MONTE COOK

Marvel Comics staged another press conference on Thursday, spotlighting Monte Cook, writer of Ptolus: City by the Spire.

Following are highlights:

* Cook said he is best known for role-playing games and a designer of the third Dungeons and Dragons game. His experience made him a good fit for the Dabel Bros. in adapating Ptolus.

* Cook said adapting the game to a comic book he decided to concentrate on Sheva Callister, a non-playable character from the game. "She's always been one of my favorites," Cook said. "She had a pretty interesting background."

Sheva was a mercenary who hung up her sword after one of her partners from past adventures was killed. She is lured out of retirement for one last mission.

"It's sort of like a fantasy noir," he said. "She's almost like a hard-boiled detective character in a fantasy setting."

* Cook said that the story takes off in Ptolus #3. "That's the point in the story where the main characters become proactive," he said.

Cook said as the story moves on, readers will discover whether or not Sheva has been set up by one of her old enemies.

* Cook, who has also written short stories and novels, said those are more like writing comics than writing for a game.

"The games are sort of technical," he said. "There's a lot more stuff going behind the scenes with the rules and stuff like that. And you don't really get to decided what happens. That's what the players do."

Cook said the thing that surprised him the most about writing comics is how much of the writing -- describes scenes, characters, etc. -- is never seen by the reader. "Nobody ever sees that beside the artist," he said.

* Cook said he would be interested in doing more comics from the Ptolus world. "They may or may not involve the same characters at all because it's such a big setting," he said. "There's lot of other people and setting to explore."

He noted that there are minor characters in the first series that interesting enough to explore in their own stories.

* Cook prasied the art of Caanan White. "What I really love the most is when I can turn something over to a wonderful artist like Caanan and see what comes back," Cook said. "He takes things that were just words, and, without fail, the things he puts on the page are cooler than what I imagined in my head. He adds a whole new level of detail."

* All six issues of the series have been written. "We're well ahead," Cook said.

* Cook said he's loved comics since he was 9 years old. "I remember the first comic I ever bought, which was an issue of Fantastic Four by John Byrne," he said.