Image objects within Grease Pencil

It's kind of a pain, when using images alongside Grease Pencil strokes for 2D animation, to have to go back into object mode and deal with a completely different keyframing and onion skinning system to do anything with the image planes. It is also currently impossible to apply the GP layer effects, like "multiply" and "divide," to an image object, which can be a huge deal when a multiply layer is being used to provide 2d shadows on a character that contains both GP stroke and image elements. It would be really nice if we could drop an image directly into a Grease Pencil object and manipulate it without leaving the GP environment. It is possible to do this to some extent by giving a GP object an image fill and adjusting the framing, but then the image does not follow any scale changes or distortions that are applied to the stroke it's filling. Can we have image objects that are fully integrated into the Grease Pencil animation environment?