A look at some principle characters in the story, from left to right: The Finn - a fence, Molly's contact for information, illegal goods and services; a recurring character in Mr.Gibson's work. Modeled originally after actor Matt Frewer of Max Headroom fame. I changed my mind when I saw Bruce Spence as The Trainman in the third Matrix film, whose features were more in keeping with what Mr.Gibson described as a rodent-like face. Molly - first appearing as Molly Millions in the short story Johnny Mnemonic, she proved to be Mr.Gibson's favorite future noir character, running through many of his stories. She is the beauty, brains, brawn AND style in this story. Modeled after two women, her likeness is based on British model and actress Sienna Guillory, who was the perfect casting choice as Jill Valentine in the imperfect Resident Evil: Apocolypse. Her figure is based on American fitness model Mona Beaulieu. Peter Riviera - a sexually perverted, sadistic and vainly twisted individual. A virtual illusionist able to project what he imagines through subliminal suggestion, he is coerced into seducing a young woman who is part of a aristocratic and reclusive corporate family on the orbital resort called Freeside. He was described as an artificially beautiful man whose nose appeared to be broken then reset clumsily by design. Fittingly, Riviera's likeness is a composite of several anonymous male models. Henry Case - One of the best cyberspace cowboys running the net when he got cocky and skimmed off the top from a job. His employers let him keep the money, but burned his central nervous system with a mycotoxin, leaving him unable to jack into the matrix. When a certain black leather-clad razorgrrl offers him a chance to be healed in exchange for a job, he leaps into this Faustian bargain without blinking. Based on American actor Ron Eldard, who appeared as a paramedic early in the television show ER, his performance as a weary and exhausted Soldier in the HBO movie When Trumpets Fade made the decision for me. I wanted him to be a bit heroic. Reason why is because Adrian Brody and even geek actor DJ Squalls were seriously considered for Case in the repeatedly abandoned film attempts. Uh . . . no. It was correctly pointed out that Molly did not have any tattoos along the small of her back, nor was there mention of Case having scars along his jawline. I did this to update and breathe some life into the visuals of the story. I designed Molly's look with additional tattoos on her right shoulder and the swell of her left breast. These are bar and glyph coding left over from her days as a "Meat Puppet": a very high-end call girl that would be taken over by an artificial behavior routine to indulge a client's fantasy while she would "sleep" through it. She also has the Chinese characters "Strength" on the inside of her right wrist, "Power" on her left, and "Love" on the back of her neck. The tattoo at the base of her spine is an Ankh with barbed wings. I took artistic license considering the visuals are in keeping with her personality and when it was written in the early Eighties, girls did not do that sort of thing. Case's scars are from when he was forced to kill three people in Chiba City a year before the story picks up. My intent would to have him stand at the scene where it happened, looking at a bullet scar in a brick wall, leading into flashback. A deal gone wrong, the two men and woman try to kill him and he is wounded by fragments from a ricochet as he kills the three of them. I also made the choice to give him blonde hair. Nearly every character actually has dark hair in this story. I think in truth it may have been an error on Mr.Gibson's part, it was his first novel and it was written on a typewriter. Molly's hair is a roasted almond brown with various color ends. I thought it would add another visual, to find them blood red in one scene, midnight blue in another and so on. It gives more into this sense of an artificial future.