Hmm, gotcha. I like elinks for it's pretty solid mouse/256color support in in terminal emulators but I haven't used it "from" other programs like emacs (just tmux). In that capacity, elinks is my primary browser for reading documentation (since I usually associate documentation with particular tmux sessions and leave it open for weeks or months on end).
w3m has image support in some terminals though, which fascinates me. I feel like I should probably investigate that some more.
I installed the w3m-img package on Ubuntu 1304, running it in xterm allows image viewing inline.
Irony: The Web page I linked to above has screen shots showing step by step how to install and run w3m. The Web page design requires javascript to display the screen shots! I wonder why web page designers do this?
w3m has image support in some terminals though, which fascinates me. I feel like I should probably investigate that some more.