If there are two genres that have marked out the history of British Cinema, it is that of Crime and Horror. Oh, we’ve had our costume dramas and our polite romantic comedies and we’ve had our art movies and social commentaries, but it’s the crime and the horror that we fall back to when people ask us about the classics. It’s Hammer and Get Carter. So Dave West and Andy Bloor’s The Wolfmen comes with a fine British pedigree, which runs throughout its pages. Perhaps this is why it feels so familiar.

The book gives a great first impression, as small time hood Jack Grey is recruited into a gang called The Wolfmen, who commit robberies wearing wolf masks. Jack’s introduction and immersion into the gang is dealt with at breakneck pace, and this keeps up for the rest of the book. The art is incredibly immediate, and Bloor’s sharp whites and deep blacks really pop off the page.

However, on closer inspection – the art, while striking, has occasional lapses. Anatomy is often off, especially head size – and there is a sequence involving a desk which utterly gets away from Bloor, who seems to want to draw the people behind it as though they are standing in a big old hole. That said, as the book progresses, these problems become less pronounced, and the heads reduce to a normal size. The cover’s not great either – I would like to see something that harked back to the obvious cinematic inspirations of the book, which would at least be in keeping with the contents.

The other main problem with the book is, although it is not advertised as such, this is the first of at least two, and it shows. There is a paucity of plot here, past the initial high concept, and the double-epilogue, though predictable, does the work of setting the scene for the follow-up.

Accent UK stalwarts West and Bloor have created here a crime story with the trappings of horror, but unfortunately it seems too wrapped up in the conventions of those two genres to make much of an impact. Hopefully the sequel will push past its inspirations into new territory.

US size, 60 pages, £3 from www.accentukcomics.com