ODY-C

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.

Picture it: your sitting by the fire, flipping through an old issue of Sandman, and your mother audibly sighs. "Why do you still read that junk?" You sit and think for a second. Despite the fact that approximately all of the movies coming out are based on comics, you still can't get your mom to understand why you love these funny books. Until now. This holiday season, give your mom a gift that'll teach her the love of comics.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop broadway musical Hamilton is one of the biggest crossover success stories in recent memory, and everyone’s going crazy for its stunning music, compelling narrative, and diverse cast. The musical is about the rise of founding father Alexander Hamilton, from impoverished immigrant, to George Washington’s right hand man, to his downfall following America’s first major sex scandal. If you’ve spun that record a million times already --- or, I guess, streamed it on Spotify a bunch --- and you’re still not satisfied, we’ve got five of the best independent comics that can meet your cravings for more great entertainment in the Hamilton mold.

I would give literally anything to read the high school term papers that kids who read Matt Fraction and Christian Ward's ODY-C instead of the original Odyssey are going to be turning in to their teachers in a few years. The first issue is out this week from Image, and as you might expect from the title, it recasts the classic Greek epic by Homer as a star-spanning adventure through space that Fraction calls "our Barbarella," and flipping the genders around so that the story focuses on women is probably the smallest change. Captain Odyssia's journey on a shift-ship powered by a crew of women whose thoughts have been synchronized, tossed by vengeful space-titans, might follow the big beats of Homer's original, but it's definitely something all its own.

When it was announced back in January, we knew three things about ODY-C, the new Image series by writer Matt Fraction and artist Christian Ward: It was a retelling of The Odyssey, would take place in space, and the characters would all be gender-swapped. What wasn't as clear was just how trippy and brutal it would be, but if the five-page prologue Ward posted to his Tumblr last week is indicative of what the whole series will be like, those are the words to describe it. Ward was sure to note that these pages won't appear in the first issue of ODY-C, so get a good look at the prologue -- with its positively luminous color palette, sometimes unorthodox panel layouts, and one big scene of someone getting sliced in two with a sword -- now.