hun you should check out
www.musiciansfriend.com they have some really nice guitar for cheap too i love that site i buy all my stuff there
and yea some other really good brands are gibson, epiphone, ibanez and they usualy have really awsome starter sets, i started with a black les paul which came in a starter set it wasnt really expensive it was like 200 or so it came with an amp and chord too
so yea you should start out with something like that.