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Rom-coms are all too rare in comics. Most stories have a romantic plot threaded through them somewhere, but books dedicated to telling a love story are few and far between in the modern market. So when Sex Criminals came along, nearly a decade into my relationship with comics, it stuck out like an especially sexy thumb. It was funny, it was romantic, and I loved it. Much like the person I shared the comic with.

Greg Rucka, Michael Lark and Santi Arcas' Lazarus is a dystopian possible future where corporations have replaced countries, and a small number of a families have all of the power. While the series is decidedly science fiction, there's a grounding in reality and our own world's potential for catastrophe that makes Lazarus one of the scariest comics on the stands.

Image Comics is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and as part of that a select number of its comics each month will feature a variant cover tied to a certain theme. While this month has Image titles with variants based on other Image titles, March is Women's History Month and to celebrate, eleven of Image's titles will feature special variants with 100% of the proceeds going to Planned Parenthood.

Saga, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, is one of those comics that seems to have almost universal appeal. I've recommended it to so many friends who have never really tried comics, and the feedback is almost always the same; "Where do I find more?" There's a simplicity to its premise that is powerful, in that the power of love can unite even the worst of foes.

There's a point for every monthly comics fan when it really sinks in that there's a whole world of comics beyond the Big Two, and that point looks different for everyone. As someone literally born months after Image was, and thus missed out on the '90s boom and bust, for me it was Chew. Written by John Layman and drawn by Rob Guillory, Chew ended last November at 60 issues. When it began in 2009, I was in high school, and newly in love with monthly comics.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years on the Internet, it’s that there’s no aspect of comics that can’t be broken down and quantified in a single definitive list, preferably in amounts of five or ten. And since there’s no more definitive authority than ComicsAlliance, we’re taking it upon ourselves to compile Top Five lists of everything you could ever want to know about comics. Image Comics is celebrating its 25th anniversary this week, and as a publisher it has such a breadth of stories and genres, that their roster of awesome and evil villains is as strong and varied as the comics themselves. With dozens to choose from and only five making the list, competition was hot but we narrowed it down to the five best and baddest Image Comics villains from over two and a half decades of comics.

Pretty Deadly, by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios, and Jordie Bellaire, is a story about stories. It's a fantasy western about Death's daughter Ginny, but it's truly a gorgeous, lyrical, epic poem about myth itself. And like traditional epic poems, there's love, and death, and vengeance. We've put together a Pretty Deadly mixtape with a vaguely "Americana" style, with songs whose lyrics contain grand narratives about death. Expect murder ballads galore.

Matt Fraction, Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá's Casanova is a whirlwind of a comic, mixing espionage, family drama, and multiversal crises in one sleek and sexy drug-soaked package. Casanova launched in 2011 at a time when a lot of the industry was playing it relatively safe, and it felt like something decidedly new and dangerous, and helped kickstart the new Image revolution of the late '00s.

Comic books and video games go together like pork chops and applesauce. Video games make the perfect playground for characters with abilities that are larger than life, and over the years we've been graced with a number of strong contenders for the best comic book video game. But like most creative ventures, not every swing results in a hit. Despite not being around nearly as long as Marvel or DC, Image has had its fair share of video games based on the properties it's published. While lately the Image Comics gaming universe has had a string of successes with the likes of The Walking Dead from Telltale Games and The Darkness from Starbreeze, the going wasn't always this good. In fact, at times, it was downright discouraging.

Comics are too expensive, and run for too long, and are basically evil super operas that cost a dollar for every half second we read them. You can't miss an issue, or else you're out of the loop for it all, but that also means that almost nothing happens in each comic, so you might as well wait for the graphic novel collection, but oh wait, if you do that it increases the odds of the comic being cancelled! Comics are great, but also completely broken. That's where Fell should have come in.