Rare moments of excellence shine through what is otherwise a very odd and random collection of characters facing their own ficional existence.
The good, clean, cartoony art matches the humour very well, sometimes allowing a very intelligent, dark joke to slip by almost unnoticed. Brian Azzarello is better known for his nastier, crime-related work, so it's nice to see him turning his eye to something created for pure fun and laughs. He doesn't hit the mark every time, so there's some flab here, but it's worth it when he does.
While poking fun at the makers of comics (using a very Chris Ware-esque look for the 'Architect' villains), with an ever increasingly bizarre cast that manages to avoid most cliches, he comes up with some genuinely interesting ideas it's a shame remain undeveloped here or elsewhere - a little boy that can answer any question once given a dime, a french speaking neanderthal, and a talking Nazi gorilla that becomes a vampire.
Unfortunately the humour misses a few tricks, most obviously being their general interaction, for the sake of an absurd plotline that plays it's only good trick at the end. More could have been made from the 'belief' basis of the story inbetween the first chapter and last, so you're left with a run of incidents that don't make use of the general idea, and leave you feeling a little like this was an exercise in character creation and one-liners, and a good idea went astray.
Worth reading but not buying.