Kill or Be Killed

I'm a firm believer that comics aren't a medium that favor page after page of dialogue, so you need interesting ways to present that information. This month's Kill or be Killed, by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Elizabeth Breitweiser, presents a perfect example.

The fact that Image Comics is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year has made me feel so old that I'm worried about just deteriorating into a vaguely person-shaped pile of dust any second now, but there's one thing that's really helping to take the sting out of it: An amazing roster of variant covers where current image titles like Sex Criminals, The Wicked + the Divine, The Walking Dead, and Invincible homage the classic first issues from throughout the company's history, like, uh, Sex Criminals, The Wicked + the Divine, The Walking Dead, and Invincible.

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.