I actually know when I started reading Cry For Dawn. I can't pinpoint too many beginnings in my life, but I know this one because the first thing I saw was the calendar.A friend of mine had the calendar when the year was actually right, so that would've been 1992. He wasn't even a fan, but he had a lot of groupies and someone had given it to him. I was enthralled. A redhead made into a sex symbol? Please, people were still calling me "Pippi" and "Carrot top." Redheads weren't sexy! But this one was. So she became my alter-ego, and has been ever since.
She made me ballsy and proud of my hair and my looks. I look just like her. Not just the hair, we have the same basic features and the same figure, too. More than one person asked to make a costume for me for the DragonCon contest last fall, but I couldn't go. (I'm not saying this to brag, I swear! Just trying to explain why she means so much to me, she changed my whole opinion of myself!) I had a huge painting of her (the one in the red armor) in my apartment, and everyone that came over said "Wow, who painted that picture of you? It's so-o-o-o cool!"
I have most of the Cry For Dawns (I got them cheap - they were still on the shelves as new releases! Lucky me...) and I've been collecting Linsner ever since. Everything I can get my hands on... The variant cover for Dawn #2 (the Japanese one, with Darian's disembodied head in Dawn's hand) is my favorite, in case you're wondering.
Yeah, yeah. More later.