The Prologue illustrates the beginning of Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures in comic strip format. Donald Tickham buys his wife, Tootie, a Ulysses 2000X vacuum cleaner for her birthday. She seems less than thrilled to receive a cleaning appliance as a gift, but Donald insists on trying it out. The vacuum proves far too powerful and sucks up the carpet and several objects. Donald tells Tootie to try it outside instead.

It is summer break, and Flora Belle Buckman is reading a comic about the Amazing Incandesto in defiance of a contract she signed with her mother, Phyllis Buckman, to “work to turn her face away from the idiotic high jinks of comics and toward the bright light of true literature” (5). Flora’s mother writes romance novels, but Flora hates romance, much preferring to read about adventurous superheroes. This is why her mother calls her a “natural-born cynic.” Flora also likes to imagine her speech as word bubbles above her head, as if she were in a comic herself.

As she reads, Flora suddenly hears a loud noise and sees Tootie in her yard, vacuuming chaotically. When Flora notices the vacuum heading straight for a squirrel, she yells at Tootie, but is not heard.