Sin City: The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller.
Title: Sin City: The Hard Goodbye.
Author: Frank Miller.
Genre: Graphic novels, fiction, crime.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1991-1992.
Summary: It's a lousy room in a lousy part of a lousy town. But Marv doesn't care. There's an angel in the room. She says her name is Goldie. A few hours later, Goldie's dead without a mark on her perfect body, and the cops are coming before anyone but Marv could know she's been killed. Somebody paid good money for this frame... but they may have messed with the wrong guy.
My rating: 8.5/10
My review:
♥ You get in a fight, you fight in a war, and you figure all the worst of it will be worth it for the one big moment-but that moment as good as it is it's never good enough-but this... One last time I wonder why... then she falls against me, dripping with that angel sweat of hers, the perfect woman. The goddess. Goldie. She says her name is Goldie.
♥ "Hell? You don't know what hell is. None of you people do. Hell isn't getting beat up or cut up or hauled in front of some faggot jury. Hell is waking up every god damn morning and not knowing why you're even here. Why you're even breathing. That's what hell is and I'm finally out. It took somebody who was very kind to me getting killed to do it but I'm out. I know exactly why I'm breathing. I know exactly what I'm doing."
♥ Nothing to do but sit and wait for the damn sun and all the prying eyes to get out of the way. I hate the sun. And the eyes. The air cools. The sounds change. The suits and briefcases scurry to their fortresses and bolt their doors and balance their checkbooks and ignore the screams and try not to think about who really owns Sin City.
My hands are shaking like a kid's at Christmas. The years fall away, just so many chunks of dead flesh. And there's blood in my hands, in my arms, pounding between my ears and pushing me forward and telling me I'll never be tired again...
...And Sin City, she's a big, bad broad flat on her back begging for it and I take her for all she's worth and then I take her again and she's still begging.
Damn, it's good to be alive.
♥ "Worth dying for. Worth killing for. Worth going to hell for. Amen."
♥ ...But if I'm doing all this thinking, that means I'm still alive, doesn't it?
Why didn't he finish the job?...Or is this the hell I've spent my whole life earning, falling, forever falling, never knowing?
♥ Rain doesn't come to Sin City real often, and when it does, it's usually pretty lame stuff. Warm as sweat and lucky if it gets to the pavement before it evaporates.
But maybe twice a year the desert sky really coughs it up and spits it out. A cold, mean torrent that turns the streets to glass and chills you to the bone.
Most people hate the rain when it's nasty like this. But me, I love it. It helps me think.
I'm not real smart, but I feel a whole lot smarter when everything goes slick and everybody skitters off the streets and gets out of my way.
I love the rain. I love the icy way it creeps down my neck. The way the air goes electric and everything seems so clear.
You breathe and your nostrils work.
That's what I do. I breathe in and I just let my feet take me wherever they want.
And I think.
♥ Back in school the sisters would never shut up about him. Man of the cloth. War hero. In the medical corps. Philanthropist. Educator. Could've become president but he chose to serve God.
And along the way he just happened to become the most powerful man in the state. He's brought down mayors and gotten governors elected.
And here he's going to get killed in the name of a dead hooker.
I'm getting used to the idea.
More and more I'm liking the sound of it.
♥ I wipe the blood off and I take a deep breath and I take a good long look at the monster in the mirror.
Don't screw up this time, Marv. It's too important. Right now, while you're alone, feel the fear and get past it. Go ahead. Shake like a junkie. Let your heart crawl up your throat. Let your stomach squeeze itself into a golf ball, into one of those black holes that sucks everything into it.
Think about dying. Think hard. Picture it. A bullet through your brains and that's if you're lucky, getting it that quick. But it's just as likely going to be the slow way. A long, bad joke of a trial and a longer wait in a cell until they strap you into that chair and a million volts send you straight to hell and they'll call you a psycho killer who got what was coming to him.
Picture it. Feel it. Get used to it. Then put it back inside where it belongs. You've got some people to kill. And if you do it right it won't matter what anybody says. You'll go to your grave a winner.
♥ It isn't long before I break into a run. I can't help myself.
No shaking, now. No cold sweat. No doubts. The fear got out for a little while there but now it's crawled back in, far away, a small cold thing lost in a belly that's full of fire.
Even the woods don't scare me anymore because I'm just one more predator and I'm bigger and meaner than the rest.
All I've ever been good at is killing so I might as well enjoy it.