DC Comics President Jim Lee crashed the Stuart Fails to Save the Universe Comic-Con panel on Thursday as a surprise panelist. He joined the freshman sci-fi show’s cast and producers to tease an upcoming DC Comics-themed episode, admitting at one point that it features “some of the best versions” of his iconic characters.
Lee appeared alongside cast members Kevin Sussman, Lauren Lapkus, John Ross Bowie, and Brian Posehn, and creators Chuck Lorre, Zak Penn, and Bill Prady inside the packed Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con. Felicia Day moderated the panel following a screening of the pilot episode, which streams tonight on HBO Max.
“They requested some DC characters to be involved in an episode, so we tried to make that happen,” Lee said about his first conversation with the Stuart team. While he wouldn’t name any specific characters so as to avoid spoilers, he did reiterate that “Mr. Freeze is in the trailer.”
He added, “It was just amazing that they were trying to do something that was true to our characters, but at the same time find comedy in it.”
The DC executive admitted to being “blown away” when he visited the set, saying, “It was completely not what I was expecting. Bill and Chuck started talking about the overall arc of the 10 episodes, and I thought, ‘This is super ambitious.'”
The new show follows comic book shop owner Stuart Bloom (Sussman), who finds himself at the center of a multiversal nightmare. It’s up to him to try and repair reality with some help from Denise (Lapkus), Bert (Posehn), and Barry Kripke (Bowie) … as well as a plethora of alternate versions of characters that fans already know.
“It’s like nerds going through Gulliver’s Travels, and I was sold,” Lee revealed about the show’s plot. “I was like, ‘This is awesome. This is fantastic.'”
Most notably for comic-book fans, Lee suggested the DC episode does more than just borrow familiar iconography. “Some of the DC characters they have in it, I think, are some of the best versions I’ve seen of those characters,” he teased.
Lee was “so inspired” after the set visit that he also created the cover art for the show’s exclusive comic tie-in. He recalled thinking, “I want to see Season 2 of this! But I wanted to do my part and bring these characters to life. It’s very meta to me.”
Lorre told the crowd that the main goal of Stuart was to “shoot it like a movie … and try to make a science-fiction comedy that the characters of The Big Bang Theory would watch and argue about.”
Sussman explained how walking into the three-dimensional version of his Pasadena comic-book store from The Big Bang Theory was “a fantasy, dreamlike experience.” As for his favorite part of the show? “The best thing about it was just working with these guys again. I didn’t realize how much I missed them.”
Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is the latest installment in the popular BBT franchise and the first official sequel after both Young Sheldon and Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage served as prequels. Episodes air Thursdays until the Sept. 24 finale.
