So I sort of found a solution, first things first I selected all the imported images and made sure their size and corners were exactly how I wanted them to be.
 

Next I used this option that is for some reason only available in the right side panel, doesn’t have a shortcut and is completely absent from the right click menu for some reason.

That made each image a separate component instead of a single one.
Which still isn’t what I was looking for but with multiple components selected, this option shows up at the top of the right side panel, turning each component into a variant of a single component.

This still didn’t allow me to make all these images a variant of an EXISTING component,
but even so this allowed me to get the end result I was looking for.

Figured I’d share my findings in case a similar situation pops up for someone in the future.

Also Figma Team: please add this to the right click menu and if possible assign ⌥⇧⌘K to it
That way one uses ⌥⌘K to create a single component of their selection and simply adding ⇧ to it creates individual components instead

By the way, “Create component set” does the above in one step. It creates a single component where the selected frames are variants.

I missed that option initially too, because I was looking for an option that says “variants”, like “Combine as component variants” or similar. To my knowledge, the wording “component set” isn’t used anywhere else, so Figma should change it to make this option more discoverable.

​@Damian_Oczki 
Oh! that’s also good to know, personally I think all 3 of these should be in the right click menu as well, “Create component” already is in there, but “Create multiple components” and this “Create component set” option you mentioned should also be in there, perhaps under a newly added submenu called “Component”.
Sure that last part would add an additional step however small it may be, but imo if you’re creating components all the time, you should learn the shortcut anyway