Comic Book

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is a comic book that Stuart discovers on his journey through different universes. The first comic appears to have been planted by Stuart Prime. It recounts Stuart’s involvement in the multiverse catastrophe, offers instructions for continuing his mission and includes a mail-order advertisement for a quantum device. Stuart Prime later supplies another copy when Stuart needs a replacement machine.

A comic titled Stuart Fails to Save the Universe TRAPPED! subsequently appears with Stuart and his companions imprisoned in its pages. A mysterious entity known as the Adversary instructs Kyle and Trevor to keep the group captive by refusing to sell the comic. The group move from its cover into a world of comic book superheroes, while their experiences appear as panels that Trevor can read. They eventually escape its pages with the help of the Flash’s Cosmic Treadmill.

104 “Spoiler: Stuart Makes a Wallet”

In a seemingly idyllic suburban reality, Stuart has been discharged from a psychiatric hospital after accepting that his memories of other universes were delusions. Although he is a celebrated artist in this world, he is drawn to the Comic Center of Pasadena while out walking.

Inside, Stuart instinctively settles a comic book debate between Kyle and Trevor before discovering Stuart Fails to Save the Universe on a shelf. Its cover depicts him holding the quantum device, surrounded by Denise, Bert and Kripke. As Stuart takes the comic to the counter, Stuart Prime emerges from the back of the store, watches him and disappears through a wormhole without being seen.

Back home, Stuart retreats to the bathroom to read the comic in private. With Stuart Prime narrating, it explains that Leonard, Sheldon and Howard constructed the quantum device at Caltech. Stuart visited to share the news of his clean colonoscopy and accidentally knocked the machine from a table, entangling himself with the fate of the universe.

The comic revisits messages that Stuart missed in earlier realities, calling him a “big dope” for failing to notice them. It promises further instructions once he escapes his current prison. On the back cover, Stuart discovers a mail-order advertisement for a vari-state quantum entanglement device that promises to transport its owner to an alternate reality.

Stuart orders the machine and activates it after it arrives. He and his companions awaken in pods in a scene from The Matrix, discovering that their suburban lives were just an illusion. Realizing that this new setting is also manufactured, Stuart tears through its fabric, reaching a vast white space where the group find the original quantum device and uses it to escape.

106 “Spoiler: Corn is Delicious”

In the reality where humans evolved from cows, Stuart and Denise decide to put down roots and give their quantum device to Bert and Kripke. Stuart Prime confronts them at the comic book store, insisting that Stuart’s connection to the multiverse catastrophe makes him the only person capable of resolving it.

When Stuart points out that he no longer has the machine, Stuart Prime offers him a copy of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe and tells him to order another. Stuart questions how another device can exist, prompting Stuart Prime to question how their own conversation can even be happening. Unpersuaded, Stuart declares that he is finished with the mission and storms away.

After a change of heart, Stuart commits to the mission and orders the replacement. Its instruction manual describes it as a quantum echo that will merge with the original machine when activated. Stuart and Denise use it to reach Bert and Kripke, who are stranded between universes. The replacement merges with the original device, allowing Stuart and his companions to continue their journey.

108 “Spoiler: We’re as Confused as You Are”

After taking an improved quantum device from their lab-coated doubles, Stuart and his companions use it to escape the war-torn reality. In another version of the comic book store, Kyle and Trevor receive instructions from the Adversary, a swirling entity of black tendrils with a glowing orange center.

The Adversary announces that the group’s forward progress has been stopped and orders Kyle and Trevor to keep them there. On a nearby display, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe TRAPPED! depicts Stuart and his companions on its cover, now imprisoned in ink. When Kyle asks what to do if someone wants to buy the comic, the Adversary tells them not to sell it. Trevor asks what they should say, prompting the instruction: “You tell them it’s not for sale.”

On the cover, the cartoon version of Kripke moves his mouth as he asks where they are. Stuart’s mouth then moves as he replies, “I’m gonna guess wherever we are, we’re trapped.” All four of them then look up at the comic book’s title.

109 “Spoiler: We Couldn’t Get Green Lantern”

Kyle and Trevor remain in the comic book store under the Adversary’s orders not to sell Stuart Fails to Save the Universe TRAPPED!, keeping Stuart and his companions imprisoned inside. On the cover, Kripke blames Stuart for their predicament, pointing to his name in the title. Denise worries that she will spend eternity frozen with her ass sticking out, prompting Stuart to explain that mild titillation helps sell comics to twelve-year-old boys. He places them among the new releases, “between Marvel and Vertigo”, but Kripke notes that he left out being “twapped on the cover of a comic book”.

Kyle grows nervous when he finds Trevor reading the comic. Trevor argues that the Adversary only forbade selling it, but Kyle tells him to put it back. Meanwhile, Denise notices that Bert has disappeared from the cover. Calling from page two, Bert tells the others to walk toward the big splash page. They shuffle off the cover to join him, with Bert warning them to watch out for staples.

On a city street, the group return to their three-dimensional forms. Denise celebrates getting out, but Bert points out that they are actually deeper inside the comic. As Stuart and Kripke trade barbs, Denise reminds them that, meanwhile, they are trapped inside a comic book, pointing to a floating “Meanwhile…” caption above their heads. Stuart identifies their surroundings as Gotham City and devises a plan to escape using the Flash’s Cosmic Treadmill. The group head to the airport to catch a flight to Central City.

Delayed at Gotham’s Archie Goodwin Airport, Kripke questions how sitting for hours in a departure lounge constitutes a story in an action-packed comic book. A sequence of panels follows Denise as she eats airport sushi, becomes ill and hurries to the women’s toilets. After finding a vacant stall, she eventually returns to her companions and drinks from a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

Back in the store, Trevor is again reading the comic, now open to pages showing the same airport scenes. Alarmed that the group are no longer on the cover, he calls Kyle over. After Trevor explains the situation, Kyle calls him an idiot and asks where they are. Trevor tells him not to panic: “They’re flying to Central City. It’s kind of boring. Denise has diarrhea.”

As Kyle panics, Trevor begs him not to tell the Adversary. Kyle replies that there is no need: the entity is all-knowing. The Adversary appears and menacingly calls Trevor’s name. Trevor protests that he was told not to sell the comic, not that he could not read it. The Adversary ends the debate by firing an energy beam at Trevor, leaving only the comic and his charred sneakers behind.

The Adversary then summons Mr. Freeze, who walks onto the comic’s cover. Told, “You know what to do,” the illustrated villain gives a thumbs-up and walks off the cover. Inside the comic, he pursues Stuart and his companions in Central City.

The group eventually enlist the Flash’s help and use his Cosmic Treadmill to escape the comic, returning to the store where it is still on display. The cover of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe TRAPPED! is now blank apart from its title.

110 “Spoiler: Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience”

With the comic book store floating alone in a vast dark void, Kyle picks up Stuart Fails to Save the Universe TRAPPED! as he explains that the entity which imprisoned Stuart and his companions in its pages moved the whole store to “nowhere” after they escaped.

When Stuart asks why the entity dislikes them, Kyle puts down the comic and picks up an issue of TERROR: Tales of the Universe. He explains that fourteen billion years ago, there was nothing apart from a consciousness that their minds perceive as a “swirling ball of omnipotent cosmic shit”. A dark, blank page illustrates the nothingness, drawing a sarcastic response from Kripke: “Very helpful. I... I couldn't imagine it.”

Holding the comic up for them to see, Kyle explains that the consciousness caused the Big Bang but deeply regretted the creation that followed. It hated everything, from the planets and the stars to salsa dancing and Vaseline, and missed the peace and silence of infinite nothing. Kyle warns them not to bring up the Big Bang if they meet it, as it remains a sore subject.

When Stuart asks what this has to do with him, Kyle turns to a two-page spread. The left page depicts Stuart holding the quantum device, while panels on the right show him entering the Caltech lab, the machine falling from a table, and Howard, Leonard and Sheldon screaming as it hits the floor. Kyle explains that breaking the device opened a crack in reality, giving the consciousness its first opportunity to pull the plug on the whole deal: “every universe, every molecule, every atom, everything”.

Stuart summarizes the predicament: “So, it’s trying to keep me from undoing what I did so it could undo what it did?” Kyle closes the comic and hands it to him, responding, “Well put.” Stuart begins looking through its pages as Kripke grows agitated by the unexplained laughter he hears.

Later, Kripke discovers that everything they have been through is documented in the Stuart Fails to Save the Universe comics available in the store. He points out the “Cow Stomachs” and “Paradise World” issues, admitting that they were “kind of the assholes” in the latter. He also highlights three issues in which Gary dies, including ones with covers depicting him being crushed by a falling piano and driving a yellow taxi outside an airport. When Stuart returns from the back room, Kripke hands him the issue covering his “wittle trip to the nuthouse.”

Kyle brings over another issue, describing it as “a good one”. It depicts the group underwater with gills. When Denise points out that they were never underwater, Kyle suggests, “Maybe it hasn’t happened yet.”

While the others eat Chinese food, Stuart searches through the comics for information that might help them escape. He admits that it is a long shot but hopes to find “something that shows where we are and how we get out”.

As unexplained laughter and changes to the store’s appearance lead Kripke to question their situation, he finds another clue in a Wild West-themed issue of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. He directs Stuart to an advertisement on the back cover promoting a new CBS comedy of the same name, coming that fall. Kripke concludes that, somehow, they are in a sitcom.

When Bert notices that a wall of the store is missing, with gray mist obscuring what lies beyond it, everyone turns to Stuart to investigate. Stuart asks why they are looking at him. Holding up the comic depicting Stuart in the psychiatric hospital, Kripke explains that, for some “incompwehensible weason”, he is the star of the show.

This page has been updated up to episode 110 Spoiler: Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience