Blog Archive: May 2025

Esquire Magazine
A couple of months ago I reported on a lovely chat about Superman that I'd had with a journalist from A Well Known Magazine, and am now in a position to reveal that the magazine was ESQUIRE and that the resulting article has not only come out but also features quite a lot of ME in it!

I'd made a note of when this quarter's issue was due out (it comes out every three months I think) so popped down to WH Smiths to buy a copy and was DELIGHTED to find that not only did it have a whacking great PULL QUOTE from me in it, but that the article itself was Actually Really Good. As well as being a proper comics fan The journalist, Mr J Davis, had done COMICS RESEARCH for it, and quoted a whole heap of people like G Morrisson and D Wolk of whom I entirely approve. He'd also interviewed several other people like me and I was RELIEVED to discover that I am definitely not the only one who thought that KRYPTO was the key character in the early trailers.

It was, in fact, DEAD GOOD - the only thing missing was that they didn't get me in for a FASHION SHOOT as well, but I'm sure they're saving that for the next issue!

posted 16/5/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Let The Trailers COMMENCE!
Today I am RUDDY DELIGHTED to unleash upon an unsuspecting world the first of over SEVERAL trailers for Data and Doctor Doom, THUS:



It may surprise you to discover that this was not, as it may appear, recorded over many weeks in an expensive professional studio but in fact done in a corner of the flat in the space of about an hour yesterday. Hard to believe but true! It was actually dead good fun to do, as I had been THINKING about it for ages like a ZEN PAINTER (almost exactly like that) so I was poised and ready to DO it super speedily. Excitingly it used a lot of GEAR - two laptops, a four-track, a video camera and stand, a projector and a CAPE - all of which got put away VERY NEATLY once I had done.

This is the main TOUR video, but I've also done SPECIFIC ones for each of the dates, which I'll be rolling out on The Socials over the next few days. After that the promotional ONSLAUGHT will hopefully continue with videos for a couple of the actual songs, but I need to find time to get around to doing those once I've finished the current batch of REVISIONS. There's LOADS still to do to make it all happen, but getting this out into the world today does feel like a big step. Hope you like it!

posted 15/5/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Posters Launched
Preparations for Data And Doctor Doom continue APACE with lots of work RETOOLING the script following the excellent feedback from last week's work in progress show, and also the development of some POSTERS, what I am delighted to share with you here and now!



You can click each one to see it in its FULL GLORY, for verily they are pretty GLORIOUS. They are also fairly PACKED - it's been quite a while since I last had to do an actual GIG POSTER, as opposed to a Web Event Image, and I'd forgotten how much STUFF you have to cram into them. Also the main picture is quite busy, but to be honest I rather like that - the advice is always to do "a single striking image" but for Fringe Shows that always seems to end up being a close-up of a comedian looking self-consciously GOOFY, so hopefully that means my MULTITUDE OF SCREENS pic will stand out. Hopefully!

There's loads more to DO for all this, and all being well loads more GIGS to announce too, but getting these posters out there feels like a right proper first step!

posted 14/5/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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A First Class Film Experience
After all of the excitement of the week of ROCKING the Doctor Doom show I decided to take it a bit easier on Friday, and at the end of the working day took myself off to THE PICTURES to watch "Thunderbolts". Normally I would go and see the latest Marvel film with my old, and indeed oldEST, pal Mr S Carter, but between the two of us we couldn't find a suitable time to GO for this one due to WORK etc, so I ended up on my own.

In fact I ended up almost COMPLETELY on my own, as only two other people were in my SCREEN, which made my experience even MORE luxurious than it would otherwise have been i.e. VERY For LO! we have got a new Everyman Cinema near me and I have been KEEN to have a go because it looks DEAD POSH. Spoilers: it really was!

When I arrived I asked at the bar how it all WORKED, because as far as I could see it was more like a fancy BAR than an actual cinema. The very nice person behind the bar suggested I go into the screen and take a MENU with me, and then five minutes later they'd come in and take my order. FANCY! Once inside I discovered a load of SOFAS with masses of legroom - when I go to the pictures on my own I usually book the front row for a) stretching out space and b) easy access to the LOO without bothering anyone, but here I could have sat anywhere. INDEED when the member of staff came to take my order they suggested that I could move anywhere I wanted to, not least because the aircon was a bit breezy down the front row. "Or I could bring you a blanket if you like?" they said. FLIPPING HECK!

A little while later they came back with BEER and - get this - some FREE POPCORN "as it's your first time here". A bit after that my VEGAN PIZZA arrived too, and goodness me it was delicious. Also, though the ticket for the film itself was quite a bit more than for the local VUE, the food and drink was pretty much the same price, and significantly nicer too!

Then just before the film started another Young Person came out to do an announcement about turning off phones etc - apparently Fancy Cinemas do this with Actual Live Humans now. "I usually ask people not to chat," they said, "but that probably isn't going to be a problem as there's no-one to talk to," then added "By the way, there are two end credit sequences and they're worth staying for."

I tell you what, I felt like a PAMPERED OLIGARCH by now, and could quite happily have just stayed there for a couple of hours being brought food and drink by Nice Young People, but then the film started and it was FAB. There were lots of Properly Actually Moving bits, plenty of DEAD GOOD SUPERHERO STUFF, and it seemed to have a POINT too, which was all thoroughly enjoyable. Also, the second and final end credit sequence was definitely worth waiting for.

My only complaint was that the LOO was a bit far away, but that may not worry other people who do not REQUIRE it at least once in every film they ever go to see. It was a blooming lovely experience, and I can't wait to find an excuse to go again!

posted 13/5/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Doom In Progress
Thursday evening saw me stomping across London town laden with GEAR, heading to the King & Queen for the THIRD performace of Data and Doctor Doom this week. However, unlike on Monday or Tuesday this time I was going to do THE LOT!

For LO! this was the first WORK IN PROGRESS version of the whole show i.e. the main thing what I have been doing all of these REHEARSALS for. The actual proper TOUR that people can buy tickets for doesn't start until July, but I thought around now would be a good time to try the whole thing out in front of an audience so that I'd have plenty of time for any CHANGES required. Me and Steve have done similar tryouts in the past for previous shows and it WORKS, but it is always a bit TERRIFYING to have to stand in front of a bunch of people with an hour's worth of material that almost definitely isn't quite ready yet!

It is ESPECIALLY terrifying when it is a room of PALS from various aspects of your life, and that is exactly what this was, with chums from ROCK, COMICS and also WORK all gathered in the same room. It was lovely to see everyone, but annoyingly I didn't get as much chance as I'd hope to mingle around talking to people beforehand as the show has a lot of GEAR to be set up, including a whole projection screen which I had to wrangle into place behind the BAR upstairs, with the AMAZING help of The Ingledows. Getting it all set up, and then later put away, took AGES - as Steve said later, I will need to get a ROUTINE sorted out for when it goes on the road!

Once this was done people started to filter upstairs, and at not long after 7.30pm I stood up before the gathered THRONG to do a bit of admin, before promising to go off for 10 seconds and then come back to start the show. The plan was to nip out of the room, put my CAPE on, and then SWOOP back, but somehow a previously unnoticed strip of VELCRO got involved and it took a full minute for me to come back and get started, whereupon I done THIS:

Data and Doctor Doom (intro)

Batman But Done Better

Transmedia

My Unified Catalogue Of Transmedia Character Components

That's Not Empirical

The Marvel Age

Is That Empirical?

Random Stratified Sampling

Asking

That Is Empirical

The Where, What, How And Whom Of Doctor Doom

Fuzzy Trace Theory

Many Hearts

Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars

Data And Doctor Doom Closing Medley

Data and Doctor Doom (finale)

That is a WHOLE LOT of songs, and in between them is a WHOLE LOT of talking. I had planned to record it all on my four-track for a) scrutiny b) timing but forgot, but I THINK it took an hour from start to finish, which is just about right at this point. The finalised TOURING version needs to be a bit shorter but hopefully that will come through minimising FAFF and ERRORS. There was QUITE A LOT of that sort of thing, but again I don't think it mattered - it WOULD matter if I was doing it to an audience of comic fans who I don't know, as will hopefully be the case later in the year, but one of the many nice things about performing to a room full of PALS is that they are obliged to be Quite Forgiving!

All in all I think it went OK - there were bits that seemed to go on too long, and I'm not sure the balance of songs and talking is right all the way through, but handily I DID remember to hand out FEEDBACK sheets to everyone so I could see what the AUDIENCE thought. This was a GRATE idea, although it did lead to the rather weird sensation of finishing the show and then seeing pretty much the whole room immediately put their heads down to start WRITING UP!

After that there was the aforementioned Putting Away, which I must admit I got a bit fed up with as it meant I had less time to waft around and CHAT to people, so after a bit I decided to PAUSE the packing and go and do CHAT instead for a bit. Also I had been on the alcohol-free beer up until that point so wanted to give myself time to NECK a couple of Actual Pints!

It was a LOVELY, if somewhat NERVE-WRACKING evening, topping of a lovely but VERY nerve-wracking week. The next stage will be to go through everyone's feedback, have a bit of an old think about it all, and then work out what needs to change and start rehearsing THAT. I think I'll have a couple of days off before leaping back in though, this week has been a LOT of Doctor Doom!

posted 12/5/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Doctor Doom In The Doctoral School
Day TWO of the Bits Of Data And Doctor Doom TOUR started EXTREMELY early, with me arriving at UAL's Doctoral School at approximately 9.45am in the morning. As I always say, I did NOT come to work at an ART SCHOOL to get up early in the morning, and though technically this is within my normal start-time it felt a LOT earlier because of the mighty task I was about to perform.

For LO! I was first on for the second day of UAL Comicon, so found myself in the weird and unnatural position of setting up my GEAR before I would usually have had my first cup of coffee, ready to perfrom at - YIKES - 10.20am in the morning. The timeslot was terrifying but the venue itself was much easier to deal with than yesterday, as it was in a standard ROOM used for lectures. It was still quite big though so we needed to gather up the attendees before beginning, which involved me basically BELLOWING at everyone to come over to the other side of the room!

Once everybody was sat down I returned to the LECTERN and delivered THIS:

Data and Doctor Doom (intro)

Transmedia

The Marvel Age

Asking

Fuzzy Trace Theory

Many Hearts

Data and Doctor Doom (finale)

As with yesterday it went FINE, with quite a lot of mistakes and MILD PANICS but otherwise OK. As I'd come into the building I'd noted a sign saying that there was going to be a fire alarm test at 10.30am i.e. at EXACLTY halfway through my bit so I pre-empted it by telling people that if it all got TOO exciting an alarm would go off... at exactly half past ten. I thought this was a GRATE JOKE but then when the alarm went some people thought it might be real. Still, it did give me an opportunity to put my CLOAK on, as I had forgot so to do at the start. PHEW. Here is evidence of my encloakment, kindly taken by Dr P Mendonca:



There were also a few bits where I suddenly realised that some slides made NO SENSE because I hadn't done previous songs linked to them, but I POWERED ON and hoped that everybody would be so STUNNED by the multimedia assault on their senses they wouldn't have time to notice. I'm not sure whether that's a sustainable policy moving forward, but hopefully I can work on that once I've done the whole show all together. It's all been a bit KRAZY doing two days of two different sets of songs, both taken from a much larger set of songs that are meant to go together, but hopefully it's been good practice for doing the main SHOW. We shall see!

posted 7/5/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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The Cape Is Out There
On Tuesday morning I returned to the office carrying not just my laptop but also my guitar, a projector, projector screen, foot pedal and CAPE. For LO! This week I am doing a whole lot of Data and Doctor Doom!

The first instance of this was taking place just after lunchtime as part of "CSM Comicon", an event organised by Tessa Amorosi, PhD student and COLLEAGUE at UAL, which is basically two whole days of talks and workshops to do with COMICS. I was due to do my BIT in "the street", which is a massive hallway/corridor down the middle of Central St Martins, where apparently a "pop up area" had been created. Luckily Dr Ian Horton was doing a talk in the morning so I popped down to see him and CASE THE JOINT. It was a mildly cordoned off area with a huge MIRROR and TV screen for laptops to be plugged in, which was all fine except that there was no roof, so it was sometimes a bit difficult to hear. I NOTED this for later and then returned to my Actual Job for an hour.

It all felt a bit strange - I used to take my guitar into work all the time ten years or so ago when I worked at Birkbeck and was doing MILLIONS of gigs, but I think I've only ever done it two or three times since working at UAL. Also, I was basically going to be doing a GIG in the middle of the working day, with various pals from Comics and also Work watching!

Come the hour I went back downstairs, got everything sorted out, and did THIS:

Data and Doctor Doom (intro)

Batman But Done Better

My Unified Catalogue Of Transmedia Character Components

The Where, What, How And Whom Of Doctor Doom

Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars

Data and Doctor Doom (finale)

(NB please note that I have NOT put the lyrics up for any of these songs yet, because SPOILERS!)

It went, I think, pretty good. Here is a picture of me waving to Professor R Sabin to demonstrate this fact:



Beforehand I had been naturally TERRIFED of the whole thing - not only was I doing a bunch of entirely new songs that had never been heard by anyone before, I was also doing talking between then that was almost but not quite entirely different from the talking that I'd been practicing for the past month, with similar but also different slides in a totally different order to usual, all while singing, operating a foot pedal, keeping an eye on the audience, and trying to sing loud enough to be heard in what is basically a CATHEDRAL-sized open area.

Once I got going though it went really well - there were a LOT of mistakes, but the wonderful thing was that this didn't seem to matter at ALL, and I also got to muck around and say extra stuff as I went along. The singing loud enough was tricky, and it was hard to concentrate while in a massive hall full of CSM students coming and going while Talking COnfidently, but to my ENORMOUS relief it turned out that the songs WORKED and, indeed, had LARFS in them in most of the places I thought LARFS should go. Phew!

Once I was done I packed up and chatted to a few people, then headed back to my desk. This was the WEIRDEST thing of all. I've occasionally PLAYED gigs entirely soberly, but I have almost never then REMAINED in that state afterwards, and I've certainly never finished a gig and then gone pretty much straight into a meeting about Strategic Data Requirements. Now I understand WHY this is not usually done, because it felt VERY STRANGE INDEED. I had several GALLONS of ADRENALINE coursing through my body with nowhere to go, and so I had to keep NOT getting up and running round/shouting/making stupid remarks and instead concentrate very hard indeed on being a proper grown-up. To be honest, I do not intend to make a habit of this!

Having said that I WAS booked to do something very similar the following day, with another performance at a different part of UAL with a whole OTHER batch of songs, but this time at 10.20am in the morning. How did THAT go? Stayed tuned to find out!

posted 6/5/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Practice Makes Peeved
Yesterday I had the day off work so that I could do another proper DRESS REHEARSAL for Data and Doctor Doom. I'm doing a try-out of the show next week in front of some PEOPLE - it's not on the gigs page because it's not the sort of thing I'd want people to come to hoping for a GOOD TIME, but that doesn't mean I don't need to actually PRACTICE it in advance!

Like last time I'd booked myself into create + destroy studios in London's Fashionable East London district of London, which was once again WEIRD because it's meant to be a practice room but isn't like one in any way. For starters, there's nobody there - it's all done by keypad entry, so there's no man in a heavy metal t-shirt to show you in, let alone a selection of strings, rizlas or chocolate bars on a shelf in the office. Also, the room itself is empty apart from a few fold-up chairs and a big MIRROR. I assumed this means it is usually used by DANCERS - there were a couple of young people in before me who were WHOOPING it up in that direction anyway.

On my first visit I had found a lot of the experience DISMAYING, as I'd got myself in a right old TIZZ about setting up the gear, but this time I was well prepared and got THE LOT all working in just 16 minutes. Yes, I did time myself, because I'm going to be doing this at Fringe Festivals where you tend to only have 15-20 minutes "get in" time, so I was v pleased to find that I could do that pretty easily from scratch, in a Calm and also Relaxed way.

Going through the show was a LOT better this time too, as I'd done loads of work on refining the slides and learning what went where and how. It still took about an hour and five minutes to do, what with there being quite a lot of me getting things wrong and having to try again, but I kept telling myself this is FINE. I've got a few days to practice for the try-out, and the actual People-Paying-To-Get-In gigs are MONTHS away yet, so a few mistakes is FINE.

The weird thing though is that once I'd finished I felt completely worn out and FED UP. As I packed up I thought "Crumbs, how am I going to manage to do this every day in Edinburgh?" and then "OH THANK GOODNESS I won't be doing that!" but it was still ODD to be so washed out and GLUM after doing a show that is Actually Working.

Eventually I realised that this must be what it's like to do a full show with NO ADRENELINE. When me and Steve did the shows before they were obviously in front of people and EXCITING, but when we did rehearsals it was also quite exciting because there were two of us there and we was BOUNCING off each other, and also the THRILL-RIDE of having to DO something if the other person went awry. Here there was just ME, struggling through it, and only me to blame for the cock-ups!

Even when I practice SINGING it's not quite like that as I can relax and just enjoy the songs, whereas with the show I'm constantly thinking about what talking bit comes next, or where the slides have to change. It was really quite peculiar, until I realised that ACTUALLY it's not like doing any kind of a gig or a show at ALL, but more like when I do an academic presentation. THAT has slides and talking and having to say the right bit at the right time, and practicing for THOSE sort of things is also really boring and en-glumming. The delightful thing though is that DOING the eventual presentation is almost always GRATE FUN and EXCITING as you have to deal with the audience and their questions and sudden THORTS what you have in the middle of it all.

Hopefully the actual shows will be like THAT, but with extra SINGING too. It's not long to go until I find out I guess!

posted 2/5/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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