Conan The Barbarian Exodus #1

Not the best. I am getting extremely tired of "painted" work not having defined lines or edges. A simple black line can add so much power depth and definition. Esad normally blows my eyes out the back of my head. Not here. The panel layout structure is pretty awful, reminds me of old Dark Horse manga panels relaid out for American audiences. My eye was not lead easily across and down the page. Pages 14, 15, 16 are very hard to follow just who is who and what is going on. I actually checked penciled pages to see if there was a mistake or missing page. Nope, that's how he intended it. There are some awful Conan faces throughout and the wolves and cougar? look extremely rough and rushed like he drew a random animal and then decided what it looked like later. As a story, it's fairly basic, young Conan goes from point A to point B to show just how badass he will one day be. I feel this should have been a multiple issue back-up feature rather than a single extra 4 bucks...