Blog Archive: May 2025

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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