Blog Archive: January 2024

Newsletter Day
Today is, FINALLY, the last working day of a very long January which means it is also time for our newsletter The Last Working Day Of The Month to be UNLEASHED upon a waiting world.

This month's edition is FACT-PACKED as ever, including the thrilling news that my gig in BRIGHTON next week is now SOLD OUT!! I was astonished to hear this, not least because my gigs in Brighton are often pretty much the OPPOSITE of SOLD OUT, although usually they are not under the Promotional Auspices of Mr J Walsh, who has clearly done a GRATE job. I am now redoubling my PRACTICING to ensure an excellent show for the waiting (I assume) THOUSANDS.

However, the main aspect of the newsletter that I wanted to draw people's attention to was the formal announcement of the online book launch for my book Data and Doctor Doom. The event is happening at 7pm on Tuesday March 19 on TEAMS (because I know how to work TEAMS) and will be a) FREE b) DELIGHTFUL. It's going to be a DISCUSSION between myself and all-round Comics Studies LEGEND Professor Roger Sabin. I am RIGHT looking forward to it as it will be a chance to BANG ON FOR AGES... I mean, DISSEMINATE MY RESEARCH, and am hopeful a few people will come - I mean, it appears that these days my gigs are SELLING OUT so I guess I should just ASSUME that MILLIONS will come, but just in case it would be lovely if anyone interested could register please. I promise to shut up after about an hour of it!

posted 31/1/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Winter Lights, The Wembley Years
Last week myself and The Bulb In My Lamp went to London's fashionable Canary Wharf district of London to see yet more ART.

The ART we was going to look at was the annual Canary Wharf Winter Lights festival, where they put up light-based artworks all around the ESTATE like one of those Art Walking Tours that you get but at NIGHT. It is usually dead good and so we have gone MANY times over the years, and this time it was similarly ACE but also SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT.

The difference was like going to see a BAND who you used to watch in a tiny pub years ago, but who have now gone on to be HUGELY POPULAR and are playing in MEGADOMES. When we first went to see The Winter Lights there was hardly anybody else about and no directions, so part of the fun was trekking around with the map trying to find them. This time there were THOUSANDS of people following a very clearly defined ROUTE, with big signs everywhere telling you where to go next and security staff telling you when, and when not, to cross the road on the way. To be perfectly honest, I really LIKE the ORIENTEERING bit and felt like it had lost a bit of FUN being so hugely organised like this, but even a KING OF INDIE like me had to admit that it did mean you could actually FIND everything.

Also, the artworks in the past have sometimes been a bit VARIABLE. One of my constant notes of complaint in previous years has been that some of them were PIDDLY and better suited to a small gallery than standing out in the night, but this time around the exhibits were VAST and worked extremely well with crowds of people milling about GAZING upon them. The ones that were still Not So Big had been put inside in the Crossrail Place Rooftop Garden, so that all worked pretty well too.

SIDEBAR: isn't it nice that the Crossrail Place is called CROSSRAIL Place? It's like one of those ancient signs that refer to a long-lost river, or a bus stop named after a pub that isn't there any more. In the space year 2124 I expect TOUR GUIDES to be explaining to FLOATING BRANE CHILDREN that it's named after the working title for the Elizabeth Line. They will probably then ask what THAT is, and have a lengthy lecture about what it was like before everyone ASCENDED TO A HIGHER PLANE, MAN.

Anyway, putting my MANICS FAN quibbles about the growth of the festival aside it was a lovely evening out, and the EFFICIENCY of the whole thing meant we raced around without getting COLD. It also must still have been PRETTY GROOVY because a) we were there and b) so was Internet Pioneer Dave Green, who it was delightful to see on the way round. We even got to go to MALLOW for our tea afterwards, it was GRATE!

posted 26/1/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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A Deep Political Football Analogy
I have not been going on about The Football on the blog here of late, but rest assured I am still GOING and this season very much ENJOYING the antics of Peterborough United. Indeed, things have been pretty GRATE lately, in that we have not only been WINNING but also Playing Quite Well, two things that do not always go together or, INDEED, sometimes happen AT ALL.

Of course, there were NAYSAYERS at the end of last season who foolishly doubted the club's assertion that they wanted a Fresh Young Squad. Some even claimed that they were just selling off the older players for CA$H and buying in cheap youngsters, but I for one never had any doubts and anyone who says otherwise is just making it up and almost definitely doesn't have it in writing.

The most noticeable thing about this season's bunch of players - apart from the aforemented fact that they actually sometimes WIN games - is that they do a lot of Passing It Around. This may not seem unusual to people who watch The Premier League as Passing It Around would appear to be one of the basic requirements of any football team, but it turns out that you actually need a bit of SKILL to do this properly, especially when some LOUTISH opponents try to rudely get in the way. THUS below the Championship this practice has a tendency to go Very Badly Wrong Indeed, as players kick it to totally the wrong place so that the other team gets the ball instead. It's fine, because the other them usually cock it up themselves almost immediately, but does lead to Terrible Problems if your team ever has to play someone vaguely better.

THUS long-term supporters like what I am have become used to the proud tradition of HOOFING, where a player simply HOOFS the ball as far as it will go and everyone runs after it. It is a NOBLE craft which I have come to appreciate, so when our lot first began this new-fangled Passing It Around I found it put my nerves on edge. "HOOF IT!" I would shout, but luckily for all concerned they did not take my advice - although I'm sure that, AS EVER, they went back at half-time and reported my views to the manager, who will have taken them into due consideration before deciding to stick to his original plan. It is a good thing he did, for LO! it actually seems to work!

The only problem remaining is that it can be a bit frustrating to watch your team just Passing It Around between themselves for ten minutes at a time. After years of HOOFING you begin to YEARN for someone to just whack it in the vague direction of the goal, in the hope that some lone MAVERICK will have managed NOT to be offside and then have a go at scoring a goal. In olden tymes this was joyous and delightful when it worked, but the problem was that it almost never did, especially in the vast majority of my lifetime when Ivan Toney wasn't playing for us. However, it turns out that Passing It Around works VERY MUCH INDEED to the extent that we are currently in the automatic play-off places and look to be in with a chance of staying there.

The reasons I mention all of this here in such excessive detail are twofold. Firstly, it is nice to have the chance to SHOW OFF about us winning for once, and secondly because it reminded my somewhat of the currect political situation, where most of us see Kier Starmer on telly being Sensible and A Bit Dull and Not Really Saying Much, and everybody sits at home shouting "BE RADICAL!" or "SAY RICH PEOPLE ARE AWFUL!" or whatever because it would be a lot more exciting to watch. However, as we know from past experience, this almost invariably goes horribly wrong and they end up losing 3-0 to the bloody Tories again, whereas doing it THIS way seems (so far) to actually be working.

Having said THAT, however, I note with interest that the a) much beloved b) successful c) radical manager Mr J Klopp has just announced he'll be leaving Liverpool at the end of this season, COINCIDENTALLY just before we (FINALLY) have a General Election. Coincidence? Or harbinger of the J KLOPP FANCLUB becoming a political party? If so, bring me my laser surgery and teeth whitener and SIGN ME UP!

posted 26/1/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Looking At Some Drawings
At the weekend myself and The Ratings Of My Ebay Account went to The British Museum to see not one, not two, but FOUR art exhibitions. Yes, we ARE dead fancy! These were all taking place in Room 90, which is the big room at the top where they show items from their collection of DRAWINGS and similar. We go there a lot because it is GRATE, and this time was no exception.

The first exhibition - Superb line: prints and drawings from Genoa 1500–1800 - was (SPOILERS) my favourite. As the name suggests it was SUPERB, featuring a TONNE of GORGEOUS drawings which we got thoroughly ABSORBED in. Whenever I see these sort of RENAISSANCE SKETCHES (which I do a lot of due to the above mentioned being dead fancy) I am always STRUCK by how much they look like pencils for COMICS, full of exciting dynamism and also loads of them hashed lines what they all do. What I am saying is that it was DEAD good and my only worry was that the rest of the exhibitions would be a bit rubbish in comparison.

My FEARS were endorsed by the next one - Gesture and line: four post-war German and Austrian artists - which was... well, it was exactly what it says. The BM (as we cool kids call it) tends to follow the MUSEUM RULE of putting something Not Hugely Helpful as the MAIN part of the title of the exhibition, but with a second part that actually describes what it's about, and they are generally pretty good at it. Anyway, after the FAB drawings we'd just looked at this one felt a bit like an Exhibition By Your College Art Lecturers. It was All Right, and if they were in the pub round the corner afterwards you'd be nice to them, but hey, it wasn't THE RENAISSANCE.

After that, however, things picked up again with The genius of nature: botanical drawings by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (see previous remarks RE: titles). This was a very short selection of pages from a BOOK what someone had made for a LADY in the sixteenth century of various fruit, veg, and animals and it was LOVELY. When I think of MEDIEVAL DRAWINGS (as I so often do) I usually think of stuff like the drawings on the front of PAMPHLETS with very basic images and big thick lines but these were like something out of a TEXTBOOK or LADYBIRD BOOK, and were amazingly GLOWING with colour all these centuries later.

Finally we had Ed Ruscha: roads and insects which I initially TUTTED at as the first few pictures were of some IMAGINARY ROADS what he had drawn. "HARRUMPH!" I harrumphed, but the second half of this similarly BRIEF batch of ARTWORKS was some FANTASTIC drawings of whole bunchs of INSECTS crawling across the page. It doesn't sound that amazing described like that, but there was something about them that made you just SMILE at all the LIFE going on in them, also the way he'd made it look so REAL but also quite comical and cartoony. There's a picture on the Exhibition site which conveys it a BIT but in real life it's much more FUN. I retracted my HARRUMPH with immediate effect.

Basically it was DEAD GOOD and if you're nearby I'd thoroughly recommend popping in. The insects and fruit ones close this weekend, but the others are up for a while yet and, as stated, there is always something worth seeing there, and it's also very much FREE so you can't lose!

posted 25/1/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Why Aren't We Talking About The Beano?
After banging on the other day about all the books and articles that I've had to PROOF lately I can at least let you know about one of the above that has not only been PROOFED but also actively PUBLISHED!

This is my article Why Aren't We Talking ABout The Beano? what was published last week in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. If you have access to Taylor and Francis publications (i.e. if you work at a University or similar organisation OR are an Eccentric Billionaire who enjoys reading academic papers) you can read it on the journal site, but if NOT there is also an Open Access version available to download from UAL's research repository. It is the same TEXT either way, but the "official" one looks slightly fancier!

The article is based on a presentation I did at the IGNCC conference in Cambridge during the summer, about the fact that Comics Studies deliberately avoids even mentioning The Beano (and The Dandy, Buster, Whizzer & Chips etc etc). Not only does it PROVE this fact (with STATS!) but then goes on to give some reasons why this might be before concluding with a call to actually do something about it.

I tried to write it in a fairly straightforward, not wantonly academical way that doesn't require HOMEWORK (something which I fear cannot be said of my BOOK!) because it's about something that I think is Quite Important and so would benefit from Wider Reading. The Beano is a huge part of our national identity and after 85 years of publication it has touched the lives of most people in the UK, so I think it's deserving of investigation. The same applies for all aspects of popular culture really - we seem to spend most of our time discussing works or art that very few of us ever engage with rather than the ones that have had a direct impact on millions of people's lives. I have a dark suspicion that this is to do with CLASS and that "popular" things are deemed unworthy by the posh people who rule our lives, but even saying that out load sounds KRAZY, right?

I reckon it's worth a read anyway - as you can probably gather I am quite PROUD of it and would very much like it to be READ, so do please have a look if you can!

posted 24/1/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Just Joans At The Lexington (again)
Last weekend I went out to a GIG! An actual gig! "Gosh", you are probably thinking, "I wonder what gig it was? Probably something really underground and obscure that challenged the very boundaries of 'music' and definitely not a band he's seen HUNDREDS of times."

UM.

All right, it was The Just Joans who I went to watch, for their now SURELY TRADITIONAL annual spot at The Winter Sprinter at the Lexington. Spoilers: it was LOVELY.

I'd had quite a busy day ALREADY before arriving, as I'd been to leafy CHARLTON earlier in the day to see the mighty Peterborough United continue their radical new plan of WINNING games, and then to meet Mr S Hewitt for some FINE DINING before heading up the hill to The Lexington. When we went in we IMMEDIATELY bumped into PALS, notably Mr J Osborne and Mr R Kirkham, and there followed some delightful yacking away to people like it was the early 2010s or something when we used to do this sort of thing all the time.

Sadly that meant I didn't go upstairs until the other bands had finished but, after pausing for the DEFIITELY TRADITIONAL quick hello to Mr J Jervis on the merch stand, we settled ourselves in for what turned out to be a FLIPPING BRILLIANT gig. This year "The Joans" as we cool people possibly call them were in full band formation and as such were SURPRISINGLY FUNKY, although I don't know why I say "surprisingly" as they are like that pretty much every time I see them that way. I guess it's that you don't expect people who sing songs of SARDONIC MISERABLISM to ROCK OUT quite so much, and yet they continue to do so.

As ever they played THE HITS, and as ever they did them at the end with everyone singing along which I feel is the CORRECT way to do such things. There were also quite a lot of new songs too which sounded FAB, and it was also noticeable that Katie seems to be a) singing a lot more of them b) BELTING them out rather excellently and c) doing more of the Between Song Chat. It was GRATE!

Afterwards we milled around chatting to yet more chums, some of whom I hadn't seen for YEARS, before heading downstairs to find myself in a SCENE FROM HECK. The Lexington has a club night upstairs straight after the gigs on Saturday, so the downstairs was PACKED with a room full of Indie Types who'd just come out of the gig and also a room full of Other Types who were waiting to go into what I assumed to be a DREADFULNESS-THEMED DISCO upstairs. Mathematicians will note that that is TWO rooms full squashed into one room, so I decided to end on a high note and just go home.

It was a VERY high note though, as the gig has been ACE. I look forward to doing exactly the same next year!

posted 23/1/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Problematic Proofing
You find me today up to my EYEBALLS in PROOFS. Not proofs of POLITICAL CORRUPTION nor of SPACE LIZARD CONSPIRACIES, but - even more excitingly - of Academical Research.

For LO! After spending a good chunk of last year WRITING various books, book chapters and articles I have spent the last couple of months PROOF-READING a whole heap of them. I would say that this was the main reason that I haven't done much blogging of late, but I must admit I have also been investing time in Christmas, Watching Telly and also Peterborough United!

However, it is true to say that re-reading and correcting this stuff has taken a LOT of effort and time. This was especially the case for the BOOK of my PhD, which has been a TORTUROUS process. It had already taken many YEARS to get it done - not just doing the actual PhD itself, but then re-jigging it for the book, then re-re-jigging it and writing a whole new CHUNK after the peer-reviews, then doing various re-writes myself to get it sparkly and ready to roll. After that though I thought it would all be plain sailing. All that was required was for it to be typeset and then for me to have a quick glance over to make sure it all looked OK and then we were AWAY for publication and plaudits.

That is NOT what happened. The proofs came back to me in December and almost immediately I realised something had gone Very Wrong Indeed. The first chapter I read through was suddenly LITTERED with commas, as if the old spellchecker from Windows 3.1 had made a ton of "suggestions" and someone had just clicked "ACCEPT ALL". To begin with I thought it was just Publication style, so that for instance any sentence that started with e.g. "Thus I went and did something clever" would be changed to "Thus, I went and did something clever" which ALL RIGHT I suppose I could handle but then EVERY opportunity for a comma was used so that, it sounded, like, it was, being, written by, someone, completely out of, breath. The most EGREGIOUS example was when a sentence was changed from "Later chapters will show (something dead clever)" to "Later, chapters will show (something dead clever)" which makes it sound DERANGED.

I spent a couple of FURIOUS days going through like this, coming to HATE this OPUS what I had wrote before deciding to just GIVE UP and ask them to have another go. It took me a while to get to this point because I had heard stories of people having to deal with similar issues, but eventually I realised that this was WAY more than usual - it helped that I had also had proofs for a book chapter too the same week which was LOADS better, so I knew this wasn't normal.

Happily for me the publishers were fine with it and the proof-reading company DID have another go so that I was eventually able to get the latest version sent off a couple of weeks ago. All of this means publication has been delayed, probably until early March now, but it's at least back in progress. When it finally DOES come out though I shall be PANICKING about any errors that I still missed, even after all these goes!

posted 18/1/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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