Greg, welcome to the boards!

[MACK!]

It's been a wonderful journey since those head days of our west coast tours driving from LA to Vegas in the middle of the night with a car full of Bendis and a mad on for abandoned cars.

Lay on, Macduff! And damn be he who first cries "Hold, enough"!

[Horn]

Hey David-- good to hear from you! I'm having a lot of fun on the boards this month...its kinda addicting. anyway, i guess I should explain what David is talking about:
Way back in 1996, David and I went on a "West Coast tour", making appearances in about 10 comic stores throughout California and Nevada. We had two other compatriots along with us: writer Jim Hudnall, and the one and only Brian Bendis! Sounds like a cool tour right?! Well... At this point in our careers we were all "indy" guys, and nobody knew who the hell we were. Some of the signings were impossibly horrible. At one store, they didn't have any customers, and Brian and I played Mortal Kombat for 3 hours straight (conclusion: we suck at MK). Only one guy showed up the entire time...to do an interview with Jim, Charles Bernstein who is now executive Director at CBLDF. That signing was pretty sad, but the other stores were a fantastic experience...there was Meltdown, Golden Apple, Lee's, Comic Relief, and Metro.
Anyway, during our travels we stopped at this old dark gas station in the middle of the desert... It was like 2:00 am and there wasn't a soul for miles...no cars passed on the high way and nothing to be heard except our own footsteps...it was H.P. Lovecraft scary! Inside the station was really weird-- a giant low-lit interior space with only one shelf in the middle stacked with all the snacks nobody wanted. The place was pure scum- The walls were rust colored. The carpet was orange with a dark dirty trail where people walked through the doors. Dividing this huge room was a giant gated turnstyle like prison bars! You had to pay a dollar to get through to go to the bathroom! A craggy voice from the cash register yelled, "One at a time!"... thus insuring we would ALL have to pay a dollar to piss. The bathrooms looked like a giant shit explosion and there was vending machines with sex toys and card games for truckers in there. Finally, there was these really bad dolls at the cash register made from Cactus plants. Brian wanted to buy one :-? ! Then the old leather-faced bastard behind the desk tried to raise the price on brian--for a stupid piece of shit cactus doll?! Anyway, we got in our car and we were feeling mad and weirded out by this gas station from the netherworld.... there was an old abandoned car outside the station...and then David and I looked at each other with some unspoken mind-meld thing and we both knew what had to be done. In the next instant we had burst out of Jim's caddy and we were bashing away at this abandoned car. Dave tried to kick off the door like some kind of mad ape, and I jumped up and down on the roof like a howler monkey. Jim watched from his driver's seat in disbelief. The madness finally infected brian, and he popped out of the car to do his part when the old bastard from the gas station came out and yelled "HEY! What the fuck are you doing?!". Brian did the fastest 180 spin ever, and reentered the car. David and i jumped in after him giggling like school girls, and we sped away from that unholy place with our souls intact!
I drew a montage of this event for one of Brian's comics. Maybe we can get him to post it here? Anyway, here are some artifacts from that adventure:
http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u231/greg-23/FORUM%20PICS/Psychicgun.sickle.jpg
An excerpt from my art book.....
http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u231/greg-23/FORUM%20PICS/Psychicgunsickle.2.jpg

It's been a wonderful journey since those head days of our west coast tours driving from LA to Vegas in the middle of the night with a car full of Bendis and a mad on for abandoned cars.

Lay on, Macduff! And damn be he who first cries "Hold, enough"!

[Shannon Chenoweth]

Ha! :)
That pic is amusing as well Greg, everyone but Brian is looking away from the camera. What a ham. :p

[ClintP]

How old is B in that picture? He is really young looking.

[Shannon Chenoweth]

How old is B in that picture? He is really young looking.

I'm thinking he was about 28 there being that it's dated 1995.

[Steve Marshall]

LOL. That's an awesome story.

[Horn]

28 years old sounds about right. Here's another from the Psychic,Gun, Sickle epoch:
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=125866
Brian posed for this photo reference for an issue of ESPers i was working on at the time. He's re-inacting our trip to Vegas where we were winning on the slots. The cup is supposed to be full of tokens.

I'm thinking he was about 28 there being that it's dated 1995.