Jordan Boyd

The end of the year is a time of reflection in many ways, and that often means thinking about and assessing what the very best releases in any particular medium were. As we prepare to cross the threshold into 2017, we've been collecting some of the best covers of the year by publisher for your perusal, and today we're looking at fifty of the best comic book covers released from Image Comics in 2016.

With titles such as Clean Room, Unfollow and Frostbite, Vertigo has been making a comeback over the past year or two, and is once again becoming a place where the best creators can let loose with their most interesting ideas. This March, Legacy of Luther Strode writer Justin Jordan teams with High Crimes artist Ibrahim Moustafa for a new Vertigo miniseries titled Savage Things, a mix of espionage and horror that sees a terrorist group founded by the US government going rogue and turning its attention on domestic targets.

If you've ever read God Hates Astronauts --- and you should, because it's fantastic --- then you already know that Ryan Browne is very, very good at telling stories about genuinely terrible people with fantastic super-powers. And if you've read anything by Charles Soule, well, you probably also know that he's good at high concept stories that add a little bit of weirdness to the normal world. And with that being the case, Curse Words seems like two great tastes that taste great together.

Star Wars is more popular than ever after the release of last years' seventh installment The Force Awakens rekindled everyone's love for stories set a long time ago in a galaxy far away, and the trailer for this year's Rogue One has that excitement rolling right along. Comics and sci-fi have a long history together going way back to serialised comic strips of the '30s such as Flash Gordon, and they've only grown in size and scope since then. Star Wars itself has experienced a comics renaissance at Marvel Comics thanks to the likes of Jason Aaron, John Cassaday, Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca, but once you've caught up on those, we've assembled a list of some of the best contemporary independent sci-fi comics on the stands.

This week sees Nick Spencer, Ramon Rosanas, Jordan Boyd and Travis Lanham launch a new book over at Marvel in the shape of Ant-Man. Featuring the Scott Lang version of the size-changing hero, the series is pitched as being about a C-List Avenger trying to turn around his post-Avengers career and get a new job, so he can provide for his daughter, Cassie. He has an upset ex-wife, a crappy apartment, a criminal past, and no hopes – and that's how the series begins. With this first issue of the new series - which is on sale now - Spencer takes the jokey tone of his Superior Foes of Spider-Man series and downplays things significantly. While Foes was about villains trying to keep a criminal career going, here we have a hero trying to keep a heroic career going. Or, well, any career at all. It's a familiar concept for anybody reading Marvel at the moment, as most of their solo books are about the very same idea, played out in different ways.