Ignatz award Nomination for Outstanding Collection Leon Beyond—part John Hodgman, part out-of-date school textbook—is the know-it-all, relentless-fact-baking brain child of cartoonists Kevin Huizenga and Dan Zettwoch. Leon's knowledge was catalogued weekly in the St. Louis Riverfront Times . Amazing Facts and Beyond collects the comic-strip's best and most outrageous moments. Discover the world of optilusors, Robert Skur, dance notation and grooved disc jellyfish. Learn new words and concepts: winkaton or optogenerian. Mark your extreme calendar before you travel to the pancake and eggs nebula. Meticulously un-researched and full of dubious knowledge, Amazing Facts and Beyond is the modern successor to Ripley's Believe It Or Not . Featuring guest contributions by Ted May, and others. Like a modern-day Robert Ripley, know-it-all nerd Leon Beyond has purportedly traveled the globe assembling the remarkable, if fatuous, facts assembled in this collection of the comic strip that appeared until last year in a St. Louis alternative newspaper. Each sprightly drawn installment proffers a variety of hard-to-believe claims, from a replica of Michelangelo’s David “sculpted out of the white gunk scooped from Oreo cookies” and the world’s largest swimmin’ hole (a 1:1000 copy of China’s biggest body of water) to Clara Weston’s laugh (“so contagious it got her fired from 3 jobs”). Other installments depict such faux-nomina as elephant boxing, the use of dogs as weapons, and the word’s most perilous porch swings, while still others detail the Organ Donor Hall of Fame, the World Gift-Wrapping Championships, and International Doodle Week. The authors boast impeccable alt-comics cred—last year, mini-comics-artist Zettwoch published his debut book, Birdseye Bristoe (2012), and Huizenga’s formally audacious comics, such as Gloriana (2012), have long drawn critical praise—but here they’re just having artfully silly fun. --Gordon Flagg Ignatz award Nomination for Outstanding Collection "Zettwoch and Huizenga’s flagrant disregard for the truth makes each strip a fresh exercise in trying to decipher what is real and what is not. Topics are numerous and delightful, including spotlights on the Museum of Leftover Masterpieces, the Secret History of Dogs as Weapons, and an account of a Jesuit missionary in China who fused the art of kung fu and the Bible into a single gospel. […] this is a book to be savored […]"―Publishers Weekly “I feel like a pretty well-informed guy, but the great Leon Beyond taught me something new on virtually every page of this beautiful collection. Indispensable!”―Ken Jennings, all-time Jeopardy! champion and author of Brainiac and Because I Said So . “I met Leon Beyond at a party once. In the span of eleven minutes he taught me: the sordid history of pet portraits, how to cook an egg on your own body, and which trees look the most like ex-presidents. I haven’t been able to forget these facts, no matter how hard I’ve tried!”―Lisa Hanawalt, My Dirty Dumb Eyes “The most merciful thing in the world [...] is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. [...] but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”—H.G. Lovecraft Leon Beyond is the know-it-all, fact-baking brain-child of cartoonists Kevin Huizenga and Dan Zettwoch. For four solid years Leon Beyond dropped dubious knowledge every week in the comics section of the St. Louis Riverfront Times and then disappeared! His tidbits and trivia have changed our understanding of the world forever. Amazing Facts & Beyond collects the comic-strip’s best and most mental adventures. Stretch your brain and enter the world of memory palaces, volcano graffiti, baseball slang, rap commercials, and much more. Mark your avante-garde cat calendar as you travel to the Pancake and Eggs Nebula! Meticulously un-researched and full of beautiful cartooning, Amazing Facts & Beyond is the postmodern successor to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Features include a comprehensive uncivilizedbooks.com Beyondex, behind-the-scenes photographs, and a special color section. Feel free to scratch ’n sniff! There are no stickers. “The most merciful thing in the world [...] is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. [...] but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”—H.G. Lovecraft Leon Beyond is the know-it-all, fact-baking brain-child of cartoonists Kevin Huizenga and Dan Zettwoch. For four solid years Leon Beyond dropped dubious knowledge every week in the comics section of the St. Louis Riverfront Times and then