Blog Archive: July 2025

Doctor Doom in Bedford
I was off to Bedford on Friday night for another Data and Doctor Doom show, and when I emerged from the train station I had the same first impressions that I have had every other time I've been to this fine town: it's a lot like Peterborough, but a bit nicer. I reckon this has been set up by town planners DELIBERATELY because as you walk from the railway station to town you go past an Italian church, a Polish club and a West Indian social club then down a street where they have surely EMPLOYED small children of Indian heritage to lark around in the street. All that was missing for the the full-on Peterborough Effect was Walter Cornelius, a lovely Cathedral, and Roy Kinnear bringing in a busload of people from Essex.

Actually, that's not true, it's also missing a walloping great big shopping centre in the middle that feels like everything leads to it - Bedford remains without a Queensgate equivalent which means that they've still got loads of old streets in the town centre, and it was along these I WENDED as I made my way to The Quarry Theatre where I was due to do the show. I knew it was part of a SCHOOL so I was expecting basically a small school hall, possibly with someone selling cans of drink from a HATCH. I was thus ASTONISHED when I got there to find a DEAD SWANKY theatre with a LUXURIOUS bar area looking out onto a DELIGHTFUL garden containing a stand for Bedford Radio, a music stage, a pizza stand and LOADS of people relaxing in a sophisticated style. It was RUDDY GORGEOUS!

I checked in at the box office and asked, slightly nervously, whether there was going to be an audience. For the other shows I've had access to live ticket sales, which I have checked MANY times a day, but here I had no idea and so was DELIGHTED to be told that 24 tickets had been sold - a record for ticket sales so far! I then went and put my gear in the dressing room - dressing room THREE in fact, implying that there are several - and lurked around a bit until Mr J Kell turned up. I haven't seen John for AGES so we had a good old natter, went to chat to his colleagues at the aforesaid Bedford Radio (who were broadcasting my interview with them from the other day AT THAT VERY MOMENT!), and then had a PIZZA. It was nice!

Shortly after that Mr S Bali arrived too - I was at infants, juniors and senior school with Sanjiv, almost always in the same class, and as people who have SEEN the show will be aware, he does APPEAR within it, so I'd invited him along to check that that particular bit was all right with him. I've bumped into Sanj maybe once in twice in the past few decades but as soon as he rolled up we were discussing COMICS i.e. exactly as we had done as TINY CHILDREN. I also made sure to get a PICTURE with him there and then, in case he left in FURY at the end!



Everything was running LATE as a show earlier in the day had overrun, so when I got into the actual auditorium things were a little panicky. I however was CALM and remained so when I dived into my bag to get the PEDAL that I use to move the slides along while I'm playing guitar and found that it was NOT THERE. "Oh yes," I thought, "I left it on the shelf at home after trying out a new bit yesterday." This pedal is HUGELY important because, as the more anatomically literate amongst you will know, people with only TWO (2) hands do not have SUFFICIENT hands to play guitar AND press buttons on a laptop to move slides along.

Weirdly I REMAINED entirely calm as I wondered what to do. I considered trying to do an edit to cut out the bits I'd need to move along, but then thought "It'll be fine, I'll work it out as I go along." I think this is due to my decision to VEER OFF from the plan to make the whole show SUPER SLICK and SCRIPTED and instead return to the original thought of doing it like a presentation or GIG where there's an obvious ROUTE through it all, but I can mess about along the way. I mean, this was always going to happen, but I have not put up too much of a fight!

It's also quite remarkable that I remained calm in the face of the VENUE, which was BIG! Look!



Everything was GROWN-UP and PROPER which meant that I wasn't sure what to do when the audience started coming in, and hid backstage for what felt like AGES before waving at one of the lovely staff members, managing to mime "Is it OK for me to come on now?". I must have done this quite effectively as he knew what I meant and gave me the all clear to begin.

I went on and FESSED UP about the pedal problem right from the start, pointing out that this would therefore be a UNIQUE and VERY SPECIAL performance - and it pretty much was! It turns out that you CAN do a lot of the songs with only the first slide showing, and in most cases I was able to go through what we'd missed fairly quickly when the song was done. There were a few occasions where I HAD to flick through, so did a couple of songs STRUMMING a chord then leaning forward to click to the next slide - after the show one person offered me some Constructive Criticism that the songs needed to be VARIED a bit, and I'm going with the excuse that a lot of them DID sound the same this time because of that. Also, obviously, they DO use the same chords for the most part, but I'm sticking with that excuse!

The BEST bit was after Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars, which (SPOILERS) mentions Sanjiv and me disagreeing over whether it was any good or not, when I was able to offer him a RIGHT TO REPLY! As it turns out I did NOT need to have worried about getting the photograph taken beforehand and he was FINE with the whole thing - PHEW!

Once it was all done I came back out to thank everyone for bearing with me, and people looked a bit ALARMED, like they needed to start clapping again - "It's not an encore," I said, "just saying thanks!" for LO! I forgot we were in an Actual Theatre, where you're meant to hide in a dressing room, not galumph back on straight away!

There was time for some chat with lovely audience members, then John, Sanjiv and I headed to a nearby PUB before I had to fly off again to get my last sensible train. It had been a brilliant night, full of ADVENTURE and PERIL - doing gigs is GRATE!

posted 29/7/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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A Mini-Break In Buxton
Last week The Shows In My Festival and I had a LOVELY mini-break to the utterly fab Buxton Fringe Festival, where I was doing TWO (2) performances of Data and Doctor Doom. Executive summary: it was GRATE!

This was not my first time at Buxton Fringe, nor even the second, as I had been TWICE before, doing Total Hero Team in 2013 and Hey Hey 16K in 2015. On both of those occasions I had been with Mr S Hewitt and we had had a DELIGHTFUL time, swanning around what felt very much like a mythical Edinburgh Fringe Of The Past, where performances really DID happen in church halls and cafes, rather than monolithic multi-room venues run by vast comedy corporations.

Wonderfully it was all still VERY MUCH the same ten years on, with loads of odd shows happening all over town, slung together in an enthusiastic and joyous fashion MILES away from the aforesaid comedy corporations and indeed corporate comedians who have taken over in Edinburgh.



It was also very similar in that the town was still packed with SHALL WE SAY people of previous generations. If anything this was even MORE obvious this time around as we were staying in a Fancy Hotel (paid for by The Fresh Towels On My Towel Rail) where nearly everyone working there was at most 22 and nearly everyone staying there was at least 72. It was like some weird science fiction story where half a century's worth of people had been DISAPPEARED!

We did not let this mild discombobulation stop us from have a groovy time though, as we made FULL use of the aforesaid Fancy Hotel's SPA facilities, went out to see a couple of other shows, had a bit of a stroll around, and generally LIVED IT UP. The only thing that got in the way of this being a full-on MINI-BREAK was the fact that I had to do a couple of shows myself, but these turned out to be LOVELY. I had about ten people in for each one and they were GRATE fun to talk to - one of them was even a REVIEWER who done a REVIEW of it all.



The show itself changed both nights, partly due to the previously mentioned Letters In My Words proffering some excellent NOTES what I incorporated, and also due to me relaxing into it all and TALKING a lot more.

It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a BRILLIANT way to spend a couple of days, and I would be HIGHLY keen on going back again, even if not to put a show on. As stated, it was like a version of the Edinburgh Fringe without all of the stuff that used to wind me up, which leaves something rather wonderful behind!

posted 28/7/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Futuristic Multimedia UNLEASHED!
Today is the 22nd Anniversary of the release of our SOPHOMORE album (i.e. our second one), This Is Not A Library, and so to commemorate this auspicious occasion we are unleashing the long-hidden Futuristic Multimedia album of outtakes and alternate versions as a Pay-What-You-Want download on Bandcamp.

This album was originally included as a CD-R extra on the main album - the idea was that if you inserted your CD into the CD Drive on your computer then you'd be able to access a cornucopia of extra stuff, all wrapped up in an interface that I spent literally MONTHS working on. It looked dead good though, and pretty much almost usually worked too, with lyrics and annotations contained in moving drawers, screens of data, and all sorts of JavaScript-based FUN like that. Sadly, due to over two decades of updates, none of that stuff actually works in modern JavaScript, but I've tried to pay tribute to the original design in the cover for this version, THUS:



I thought this was THE FUTURE, as anyone could do it without any special equipment, but as far as I know nobody else ever did!

If you go and have a listen you'll find demo versions of NEARLY every song on the album - there were a couple we JAMMED into being during rehearsals, so there's no demo for them - plus some alternate versions, including an extra demo for Good Cooking and the original somewhat different mix of The Girl Who. There were also extra songs that didn't make it onto the album - some of those later got used as compilation tracks and appear on Warriors of Nanpantan instead, but there's a fab one called It Could Have Been that I sort of wish we'd found time to have a proper go at.

There are TWO(2) reasons it's a Pay-What-You-Want download. Firstly, some of you reading this may well already OWN a CD copy of This Is Not A Library so technically have already paid for it, and secondly they really ARE demo versions, mostly recorded in my loft in Leicester with heavy use of the drum settings on my old Casio keyboard, so they are not what you would call Radio Ready. I've tried to tidy them up a BIT, but they are the very definition of "rough" recordings!

For those blissfully unaware of why on earth we're celebrating the 22nd Anniversary in particular, the very simple and straightforward reason is that I forgot to do it for the 20th Anniversary! I only realised late last year when I was read Mr Bob Fischer's daily analysis of his childhood diaries, and thought "Hang on, I could do that with all the blogs from when this first started!" and saw that they'd begun in the distant days of 2003. THUS, as those who follow me on Bluesky will know, I have been re-posting these old blogs 22 years later, with some contemporary commentary to go alongside it. It's all been good fun, with lovely memories of loads of exciting things happening around the album release, so I thought it'd be good to DO something to mark the occasion.

So, that's the thinking behind it all - as ever, I hope you enjoy it, and if you've not listened before do have a go with the actual proper album too, it's DEAD GOOD!

posted 19/7/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Trampery at the Gantry
On Thursday I set off for what would be the CLOSEST gig to my house for over TWO DECADES, for LO! I was booked to play at The Trampery On The Gantry which is on the other side of our bit of the Olympic Park from us. I think it took us a couple of minutes longer to get there than it used to when I'd walk from my flat in Leicester to The Pump & Tap, but it wasn't far off!

The gig had been suggested to me by the marvelous Mr G Gargan - long-time PAL, all round good-guy and joint supremo of Damnably. To be honest our main motivation for going was to have a good old NOSEY ROUND and George very kindly obliged by showing us round his Proper Record Company Office what he has there. COR! It was super-impressive - I have known George for MILLENIA, even unto the aforementioned gigs at The Pump & Tap, so it was utterly wonderful to bear witness to how far he's come. He's one of those rare people who has actually managed to make a living out of ROCK! Well done George!

The gig itself was taking place on a balcony on a corner of the Gantry (which is on the same massive block where the new V&A East Storehouse is) so we had an AMAZING view out across the park, with the Velodrome looming out of the trees like a contentedly crashed UFO. The event was run by the Trampery people so there was free BEER and also SNACKS as well, and the vibe was delightful.

The Gantry is meant to be a place for ARISTS and ARTISTIC-TYPE VENTURES, so lots of different residents had suggested acts they knew, which meant that the whole tbing was like a posher version of those old gigs I used to do at The Bull & Gate, where there was a random selection of completely different things going on. In this case there was someone singing gentle reggae songs with a backing tape, a chap doing his own songs with a guitar, someone else playing a couple of cover versions, a jazz-funk trio, and ME! It was really good fun!

The whole thing was compered by Simon Stanley Ward who did a genuinely GRATE job. When I arrived he said "As is usual, this is all running a bit late" but then he ran the whole thing amazingly, with a literal TWO MINUTE (MAX!) changeover between acts, and some optional EGG SHAKER when he felt those onstage needed it. It was lovely!

Anyway, when it came to be my turn to play I done THIS:

The Peterborough All-Saints Wide Game Team (group B)

Bad Back

The Perfect Love Song

20 Things To Do Before You're 30

It Only Works Because You're here

It was a very old-fashioned NORMAL set, which I'd decided to do a) so I didn't have to worry about doing NEW or unfamiliar things and b) because I had used my Skill And Judgement beforehand to work out what was likely to go down all right. My Skill And Judgement turned out to be CORRECT for once too, as it was a really good fun gig with LARFS and the delighted faces of people who had never seen me before and thus got involved with the stories. I liked it!

All the way through I had noticed someone scribbling what I thought were NOTES, but this turned out to be the Resident Artist of (I think) The Gantry, who presented me with the results of her sketching THUS:



Good eh? I've not been able to find the name of the artist online, so if anyone knows please tell me! (UPDATE: the artist is Lydia Thornley!)

Afterwards there was some lurking around, chatting to various people, saying of Thank You For Having Me, and snaffling FREE BEER before it was time to pack up and stagger across the park and home again ready for the VERY EXCITING England match on the telly. It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon/early evening - more gigs near my house please!

posted 17/7/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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You'll Believe A Man Can Be Nice
On Tuesday night I went to see SUPERMAN with my pal Mr S Carter. Executive Summary: it was GRATE!

To be honest I was pretty sure it was going to be - I AM a bit worried about whether "Fantastic Four" is going to be any cop, but for this one I felt pretty safe. I'd seen the trailers, read loads of the source material, enjoyed all of Mr Gunn's previous superhero movies, and OF COURSE been reassured by eminent academics in ESQUIRE magazine hem hem.

One of the many ACE things about it was that pretty much the entire main trailer for it (with Krypto in the snow) was the first couple of minutes of the movie, so after that there was TONNES of new stuff I wasn't expecting as it piled on LOADS of FUN THINGS. Even to one such as I, who is USED to the fast pace of this kind of storytelling, it did feel like there was a LOT going on, but then that is kind of the point. In Olde Tyme Filmes you would have to keep stopping every ten minutes to explain someone's origin or Tragic Past, but now we're so USED to superhero movies that they can just go "This person is THAT sort of character" and we can take it from there.

GENRE EXPECTATIONS is what I'm talking about, and this movie deals with them perfectly. There are so many examples of dull superhero films where they go "AH! We will DEFY your expectations of what a superhero movie is by making it GLUM and BORING and full of GITS" that nowadays a superhero movie that embraces the DAFTNESS of the original genre and shows is superheroes who are ACTUALLY GOODIES is - as it says in the film (NOT A SPOILER) - "the real punk rock."

And crumbs but this film is SILLY and also full of LOVELY characters. Superman is SO LOVELY that when the film ended EVERYBODY carried their rubbish out with them to be collected by staff, because a) they'd asked us to at the start and b) after watching Superman be SO SUPER we would all have felt guilty if we hadn't. Also, Rachel Brosnahan is FABBO as Lois Lane - I mean, it was pretty certain to me that she was going to be, but then I have watched all of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel with her in it so it was obvious (NB if you have not watched The Marvelous Mrs Maisel I would HIGHLY recommend it).

A criticism I have read of the film is that there are too many characters in it who don't get a chance to really do anything, but as above this feels to me like a misunderstanding of how this sort of storytelling works - the fact that you get flashes of ENTIRE HISTORIES of things that have happened that don't get explained is there to make it feel like a vast and exciting WORLD of fun, some of which may get picked up in other movies OR INDEED in other transmedia ventures.

Most of all though it was a LOVELY LOVELY film where someone trying to do the right thing was shown to be ADMIRABLE rather than a MUG to be laughed at. Laughing at someone being uncynical is EASY and celebrating UNPLEASANTNESS is SAFE, but actually being brave enough to say "this is the right thing to do" and sticking with it is difficult - especially in a world where being horrible and mean seems to be the way to get on.

Er... that went a bit further than I was expecting! What I mean to say is that SUPERMAN is dead good and I for one look forward to seeing it about a HUNDRED times more! HOORAH!

posted 16/7/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Doctor Doom in Watford
On Saturday afternoon I set off for the Not Very Frozen NORTH, or at least North of That London, to friendly WATFORD for the second date in the Data and Doctor Doom tour.

I was feeling a bit nervouse about it all so had left myself a LOT of time, and thus arrived at the venue a good 90 minutes before I was due on stage. That meant I got to sit in the bar of the lovely Pump House Arts Centre with a calming BEER and listen to the other performances going on around. Behind me, in the room I'd be playing, was a stand-up comedian, while in the larger theatre space an enormous extravaganza of about 800 people sang songs from the shows. It was warm, it was dark (the box office/bar had all the lights off so they could keep doors open without distracting people on the stage) and it felt VERY VERY much like being back at the Fringe. The only thing missing was a man with a BEARD sitting next to me looking up BEER on his phone!

Part of my NERVES was because I was going to have half an hour between the previous show and ME to get everything set up, including the SCREEN and Projector, and in the heat it was QUITE a job to get it all done. Eventually though I had everything rigged with 10 minutes to spare, THUS:



It wasn't quite the glamorous GIGANTOSCREEN of the day before but hopefully it would do the job!

With a little bit of time to spare I ventured back out to the box office to discover that my ticket sales had rocketed from TWO the day before to a mighty SEVEN, which was a big relief! As with the previous performance I got a chance to speak to most of the people who'd come in, including four Cresswells, a v nice chap who was doing his own show later ready to go to Edinburgh for the first time (I gave him the standard wisdom i.e. "take loads of money") and two ladies, one of whom had a UAL bag upon which I REMARKED!

The show itself was SHALL WE SAY not without its deviations from the script, but now I'm actually DOING the show in front of people I'm realising that that's no bad thing at all. I HAD been trying to learn the script properly but I've found that doesn't really fit with the way I do things, so it's very quickly become a BASE from which the rest of it FLOWS, allowing me to make REMARKS as we go along, which is a lot more fun for me and, hopefully, everyone else too!



It all seemed to go pretty well anyway, and after thanking everyone PROFUSELY I then had to rush into the TAKEDOWN of the set to give the next act time to get on. Happily, The Wheels On My Van had advised me to take one of our old SUITCASES to put everything in, rather than trying to cram it all into a backpack like I had before, and this turned out to be a GRATE idea as it meant I could basically SHOVE stuff in there and then sort it out when I got home.

That done there was time for a quick chat with the aforesaid delightful Cresswells before I was off home again. That's TWO of the SIX Summer Tour gigs done already - I'll have to get some more booked or it'll all be over too quickly!

posted 15/7/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Doctor Doom in Peckham
On Friday afternoon I found myself travelling SOUTH to distant PECKHAM where I was due to perform the official WORLD PREMIERE of Data and Doctor Doom at UAL's Creative Computing Institute as part of London Data Week. It was a very very hot day to be schlepping across the tube network with a backpack full of GEAR, so I was delighted to arrive in the sophisticated environs of THE HUB, where there was no air conditioning but there WERE loads of fans all set up to keep things COOL.

After a moment of sitting down saying "OOF" I got myself set up with the MASSIVE screen in there, so that the scene was set as below:



The screen there was WAY bigger and also CLEARER than any screen I have previously used, which was slightly FRIGHTENING but also dead good when, for instance, I showed the slide of 266 comics, cartoons, books, radio plays and games in my corpus and you could actually SEE the covers properly! It also meant I could put the main title slide up and people would SEE if from all the way down the corridor and know where they were going.

I did some nervous pacing around and soon we had a hardy crew of DATA FIENDS in the room. It felt a bit weird to be sat in the same room IGNORING each other so instead we had a lovely chat about other shows people had seen, either on London Data Week or on various Fringes. When I was doing revisions for the shows I had originally put in a bit of CROWD WORK at the start, as I'd been told that was a good way to make everyone feel they were having An Unique Experience, but I ended up taking it out because that sort of CROWD WORK always feels fake to me (e.g. "where are you from/what do you do for a living?" sort of thing). It was only when I was heading home that I realised we had done CROWD WORK together anyway, although I would use the non-comedy terminology of "having a chat" instead.

Anyway, just after 3.30pm we LEAPT into the actual show itself and it was... pretty good! I made a LOT of mistakes but had cunningly made everyone aware this was likely beforehand and they were just plain LOVELY. Best of all, when we got to the end someone asked if they could ask a QUESTION and this led to an impromptu Q&A session, which was not only really good fun but also RIDICULOUSLY NERDY at times. I didn't think a show about data and superhero comics could GET much nerdier, but it definitely did!



There were a whole lot of LEARNING POINTS for me, having done the revised show in front of an audience for the first time - not least of which is CALM DOWN it is FINE - but it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience with a thoroughly delightful audience. The tour is now officially ON - next stop Watford!

posted 14/7/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Buster In Brussels
Last week I was in BRUSSELS where I had a lovely time, mostly but not entirely attending the Joint Conference of the International Bande Dessinee Society and the International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference, which in case you are not aware, is a conference about comics.

I have been to this particular conference MANY times so I know lots of other people who go, and in particular know the people who go to THE PUB, so did that. I also did a presentation about some of the stuff I'd learnt from doing The Funny Comics Fan Club. Cunningly I recorded the audio on my phone and then SPLICED that together with the slides to make the audiovisual extravaganza what you can see below:



As you will hear, I had FUN doing it! I also very much enjoyed the other panelists' papers in my session - including one about Sweet Tooth from Whizzer & Chips - and indeed a whole lot of the other presentations. There was one slight INCIDENT, where I made a REMARK at the end of a discussion panel which did not go down very well AT ALL with several people, but other than that it was a whole HEAP of good times. Most exciting of all, they announced that next year's conference will be in LEICESTER, which is not only a bit easier to get to but FULL of nice pubs, some of which have not even been knocked down yet!

posted 8/7/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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The Where, What, How And Whom Of Doctor Doom
Apologies for the QUIET round here for the last week or so, I have been away in fabulous BRUSSELS for the International Graphic Novels and Comics Conference, which was GRATE!

More on that anon, but for now I wanted to draw your attention to a new VIDEO what I have done for one of the songs in the show, The Where, What, How And Whom Of Doctor Doom - THUS:



As ever, all shares, likes, tweets, whatever-it-is-on-Bluesky etc etc would be hugely appreciated, not least because there are A FEW tickets available for all of the shows so it would be lovely to get the word out more widely. Also, obviously, if you happen to be in Camberwell, Watford, Buxton, Bedford or Camden over the next few weeks it would be RUDDY DELIGHTFUL to see you there!

posted 7/7/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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