Just a few weeks after Bill Gates showed up on The Big Bang Theory, the show kept the celebrity guest spot train rolling with an appearance from renowned fantasy author Neil Gaiman. And, we're here to tell you how it all went down. It turns out that the popular writer is a big fan of Stuart's comic book store, and his words to that effect led to some nice consequences for Stuart and Sheldon.
The gang is up on the roof of their apartment building for a celestial viewing party with the help of Raj's fancy telescope one night, when Stuart gets a ping on his phone. When he looks, he notices a Twitter notification that tells him Neil Gaiman has actually sent out a very nice tweet about his store, which includes telling folks that Stuart "really knows his stuff" and that they should stop buy if they're in the area and want a cool comic store to shop in. The guys all think they missed Gaiman's trip to the store, but a flashback shows that they were too busy arguing over the relative strength of comic book metals to look up and pay attention to Gaiman when he offered his opinion.
The tweet causes Stuart to immediately get more followers on social media, but the bigger impact is shown the next day, when Howard and Sheldon stop by the store and business is booming. For the first time, possibly since we started seeing the store on the show, there are actually a lot of people milling around checking out the merchandise. Stuart, of course, is ecstatic, since his store has always been on the brink of failure up to this point. But, as you can imagine, Sheldon is none too pleased to find one of his favorite spots nearly filled to the brim with folks.
Sheldon is completely shocked and horrified at all the people in the store, and tells Howard that he liked it before because it was "perfect, like a funeral home that sells Pokemon cards." When Sheldon asks Stuart how he's supposed to sit down and read a comic now, and Stuart notes that there's still room even though a woman is in the sitting area, Sheldon balks because "If I'm gonna sit, read and ignore a woman, it'll be my fiancee."
After a few days, the store is still hopping, but Sheldon has decided that he can accept change and heads there anyway. Once he's picked out a comic and goes to pay, though, we can see that's not totally true, because when Sheldon is confronted with Denise, the new assistant manager that Stuart had to hire, behind the counter, he mumbles a terrified "nope" and leaves the store without his selection.
When Sheldon goes back to the store he decides to actually talk to Denise, assuming that she won't be able to help him pick something new because she doesn't know him like Stuart does. But, she manages to nail his taste in comics just by looking at his classic Green Lantern t-shirt, and she suddenly becomes his favorite store employee. As he and Denise are talking, Neil Gaiman comes over and tries to sell Sheldon on one of his own comics, but Sheldon is unimpressed with his suggestion and blows him off.
So, Gaiman's tweet looks like it's going to lead to some big business for Stuart (at least for a while), and Sheldon also now has someone else he can talk to about comics. All in all, that's not a bad reach for Neil Gaiman's first appearance on the show.
You can keep up with all the shenanigans of The Big Bang Theory when the series airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. EST on CBS. For more on what you can watch in the meantime, be sure to check out our midseason premiere guide and summer premiere guide.
