Moonshine
Azzarello and Risso's Prohibition-era werewolf noir — a New York torpedo sent to Appalachian moonshine country discovers the Holt family's dark secret: the best hooch in the hills is brewed with teeth.
📖 Image Comics • Started 2016
Somewhere in the deep dark hills of Appalachia, the best moonshine in America is being distilled — and every jar is brewed with blood.
Moonshine is the Prohibition-era werewolf noir from Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso, the team behind 100 Bullets, published by Image Comics from 2016 through its 28-issue conclusion in 2021. It’s 1930, the Great Depression is chewing on the country, and New York gangster Lou Pirlo — “handsome Lou” to his bosses — is sent south to negotiate a supply deal with Hiram Holt, the iron-fisted moonshiner who runs the hills. Easy in-and-out job. Except the hills don’t play by New York rules, and the Holt family’s secret recipe involves something that only comes out when the moon is full.
Country Noir Meets Monster Story
Azzarello brings his signature ear for gutter poetry and regional slang, stacking gangster double-crosses on top of family feuds, a witch, a drowned car, and the ghost of Lou’s dead sister. Risso renders the era pitch-perfect — the fedoras and tommy guns, the stripped-back mountain shacks, the shadows swallowing every backroad — and his werewolf design walks the perfect line between man and beast. Comic Watch praised the “wonderful use of light and shadows” in Risso’s art and his era-perfect Prohibition detail, calling his werewolf action the highlight of every issue. The whole series was collected by Image Comics, including a complete hardcover.
A Marriage of Themes
What makes Moonshine sing is how well its two genres feed each other. The werewolf curse is a perfect engine for noir’s deepest theme — the beast you can’t control, the violence that inevitably catches up with you — and Azzarello, whose Moonshine return was covered by The Beat, lets the story ramble from the backwoods to New Orleans and New York City as the Holt family and the mob circle toward a final, bloody reckoning.
For readers who loved the rural menace of An American Werewolf in London and the double-crosses of 100 Bullets, Moonshine is a full-moon chaser with real bite. Perfect for fans of Prohibition-era gangster fiction, southern gothic horror, and everything Azzarello and Risso touch together.
