All-Time Awesome Lines From Comics - Pt. 6

Today something really terrible happened to a comic book character that I have always liked and in fact was one of the first characters that I really liked and followed when I started reading comics years and years ago. In a couple days, I am going to post a big piece on what happened, but until then I'm to cheer myself up by keeping on the trend of posting some bad-ass lines from comics, today focusing on one of my all-time favorite bad-asses, Tommy Monaghan, Hitman. Hit the jump for the lines.


Hitman #1 - A Rage in Arkham

Garth Ennis and John McCrea created Hitman, who, well I'll let this line from Hitman #1 sum up everything you need to know about Tommy.

Hitman: My name's Tommy Monaghan, and I kill superpeople. For money. It's a living.

Tommy was given X-Ray vision and telepathy thanks to an attack by space parasites. (it's a DC comic, what did you expect? A coherent origin story?) So Tommy uses his superpowers to kill supervillains for money, but he's an honorable scumbag so he refuses to kill cops or anyone that does not deserve it. Anyway, in this story arc, Tommy gets hired to kill the Joker in his cell at Arkham Asylum, which brings Batman in to stop Tommy from doing what Bats should have done years ago. Eventually there is a throwdown with a crazy powerful spirit that is trying to kill all of them, but soon Tommy figures out it's achilles heel and goes for the spirit's own gun, leading to this:

Hitman: The bastard turns on me, scared for the first time and he's fast all right. But lemme tell you: you put a gun in MY hand and nobody's faster.

Then after they beat the spirit, Tommy is going to make his escape from a wounded Batman, when they share this exchange:

Hitman: I ain't your problem big man. I don't sell smack to kids or try and teleport Gotham to the moon. The guys I whack, hell, that's what they do. So how 'bout staying off my case?

Batman: You're a hitman Monaghan. You take lives. You are my problem all right.

Hitman: Well I could finish this right now. I could read your mind and tell all Gotham who's under the mask. Or I could just blow your head off.

Batman: So what's stopping you?

Hitman: I guess you just don't know me.

Man, this comic was all kinds of awesome.