It’s a great season for comics fans, with new releases from Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics and more. Check out these fantastic new books, featuring new Love and Rockets tales, a skull-busting anime Batman, brooding butcher, creepy-crawly beasties and more.

Quebec cartoonist Pascale Blanchet’s last work, White Rapids, was one of 2007’s best, with its bold colours and unique ’50s ad-inspired art. His latest, Baloney (Drawn & Quarterly), a Gothic tale of a Russian butcher and his doomed struggle against an evil town governor, repeats much of his earlier tale’s success. Rich, bloody reds and gorgeous line work accentuate the dark nature of the story, reaffirming Blanchet as one of the best cartoonists working in comics today.

The Hernandez brothers (Jamie and Gilbert) have returned to their beloved creation, now entering its 27th year. Love and Rockets: New Stories (Fantagraphics) retains the title’s old serial format, with both brothers contributing individual tales. Gilbert has moved away from the mythology he created with his “Palomar” tales (which followed the exploits of the residents of a small border town) for more expressionistic, non-narrative works. Jamie brings a new set of “Penny Century” tales, featuring Maggie and the gang in another wrestling adventure. That said, for those who haven’t followed the series since the beginning, this might not be the best place to start. For fans, it’s a must-read.

Holy weirdness, Batman! The new oversized collection Bat-Manga! (Pantheon) brings together ’60s Caped Crusader comics by renowned manga artist Jiro Kuwata. The Dynamic Duo aren’t joined by the Joker, Two-Face or any of the other villains from the ol’ DC rogues gallery. Instead, they’re up against goofy baddies like “The Man Who Quit Being Human!” Yikes. The stories present a more innocent, pre-Frank Miller Dark Knight era (the painted covers even take the campy TV series for visual cues). Still, the comics are pretty fun, even if Bruce Wayne looks like Speed Racer.

The first Beasts! volume was a gorgeously crafted compendium of mythological creatures, illustrated by dozens of artists and accompanied by facts and tidbits. Book 2 (Fantagraphics) is more of the same, featuring works by 90 artists, including Jillian Tamaki, Julie Morstad and Raymond Biesinger, with essays on cryptozoology, the Kraken, chupacabras and werewolves. It is the most awesome book ever.

The companion volume to Yale’s first winning collection, An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories (Yale University Press) is even better than the first, with classic and contemporary works by more than 85 artists. Edited by cartoonist Ivan Brunetti, the book brings together comics from the usual heavy hitters (Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman) with more obscure tales, like R. Sikoryak’s hilarious “Action Camus” (with a chainsmoking Superman-Meursault) and rediscovered classics, including Fletcher Hanks’s bizarre sci-fi fantasies and Mack White’s self-explanatory “Nudist Nuns of Goat Island.” Though most comic collectors will have some of the works contained in the anthology, it’s valuable to have them collected in one volume, and with so many artists, you’re bound to find something new.