Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

We lost one of the all-time greats yesterday with the death of Len Wein. There are so many amazing Len Wein stories out there, but I thought it would be fun to share one of his most charming and most clever stories. I featured this bit as a Comic Book Legends Revealed many years ago, but I thought it would be nice to give it its own spotlight today, in honor Len. Speaking of Comic Book Legends Revealed, Len was always a great source for the column, as he would gladly talk about whatever topics I felt like asking about, even when he often didn't remember the minutiae of plot points from 40 years ago (which is obviously quite expected).

Anyhow, today's story begins in August of 1969 when Charles Schulz begins a series of strips in his Peanuts comic strip featuring his famous beagle character, Snoopy, writing a novel.

The story continued through early September...

These strips were part of a collection of Peanuts strips that became very popular in the 1970s.

Anyhow, in 1981, DC celebrate the 500th issue of Detective Comics. The lead story is an absolute classic, by Alan Brennert and Dick Giordano, about what if Batman's parents WEREN'T killed? Would he still become a hero? However, there were a bunch of other stories in the issue. Len Wein wrote two of them. One longer one, spotlight the original star of Detective Comics, Slam Bradley (with art by Jim Aparo) and then one short two-pager, with art by Walter Simonson.

Check it out...

Click here if you want to enlarge the image.

Click here if you want to enlarge the image.

Yep, every caption was directly from Snoopy's novel! How clever is that?

Len Wein was a very clever man. We'll miss him greatly.