Adam Riches

In the latest of our galleries celebrating the best covers of the year, we're looking at the best covers from IDW. IDW maintained its impressive and diverse line of licensed properties in 2016, from Ninja Turtles to Little Ponies, as well as ambitiously expanding and collating its Hasbro properties under the "Revolution" banner, and reviving and reinventing the Micronauts, M.A.S.K., and Rom.

I try to keep it pretty quiet, but I love GI Joe. At the risk of sounding unpatriotic, I especially love their enemies, the forces of Cobra. I mean, sure, the Joes are America's daring, highly trained special missions force, but Cobra? That bunch of ruthless capitalists has a cadre of evil ninjas, a transforming castle and a dude who can telepathically control crocodiles. What's not to love? Aside from the part where they want to blow up the world, I mean. In any case, my love of Cobra has made me pretty excited about Adam Riches' variant cover for IDW's GI Joe: A Real American Hero #212, drawn for Clearwater, Florida's Emerald City Comics, which features every single member of the evil organization from its thirty-year history. Yes: all of them.