[texhax] Plain TeX for graphic layout

[jw]

Hello,
I'm a bit of a TeX newbie.
I'm working on a project where I want to layout images and text in
rectangles. This is for creating playing cards (kinda like those for a
CCG) for games I design.
Basically I want to specify some rectangles, put images in some,
wrapped text in others. Might want to embed some icons in the text, as
well.

It seems like TeX might fit the bill for this, but what flavor should
I be looking at? LaTeX and most other macro packages seem to be
document-oriented (tracking table of contents and soforth).
Or maybe I should create my own set of macros, using plain TeX?
I'm a programmer; I don't mind if it gets technical, just don't want
to re-invent perfectly good wheels.

And, slightly off-topic, anyone have any pointers to other solutions
that might work for me?
I was also considering straight PostScript, since my needs are really
quite simple.
I initially was just going to use ImageMagick, but the text support is
not great, and I would have to do a lot of fiddling with font metrics
and such.

-John