Blog Archive: June 2024

By The Arts Council Denied! Again!
Back in March I discussed my REJECTION by The Arts Council, where I'd asked for some CASH to Develop My Creative Practice in order to do some shows about DATA and all that. At the end of that particular blog I said I would not be COWED by this rejection and would try again.

True to my word I DID try again and, with the help of even MORE lovely pals, put together what I thought was a pretty good application. However, The Arts Council clearly disagreed and earlier this week sent me ANOTHER rejection letter. BOO!

I was pretty upset about it last time, mostly because I had half persuaded myself that I would GET it, but this time I was less optimistic, having seen evidence that they pretty much NEVER fund comics stuff, and so less saddened. I was a BIT saddened because, to be honest, the small amount of CA$H involved would have really helped me actually DO some stuff quite soon, but I was also a little bit RELIEVED as it meant that a) I had had a good old GO at it and b) could now carry on under my own steam. AS IS ALWAYS THE WAY.

Having spent several decades in The Krazy World Of Rock And Roll it has ever been the case that doing things YOURSELF is much much MUCH easier in the long run than trying to persuade a GATEKEEPER to do it for you. For example, putting a record out YOURSELF is a massive pile of work but it is as nothing compared to the SOUL CRUNCHING AGONY of trying to get somebody else to agree to do it and then, when they eventually DO agree, constantly trying to find out if they're STILL going to do so, and WHEN. I have had similar experiences with putting SHOWS on, publishing books, gig promotion etc etc etc ET FLIPPING CETERA. There are rare occasions when it works - for instance Wipeout Music have been BRILLIANT as my Music Publishers since FOREVER - but usually just getting on and Doing It Yourself is the best way.

And with that in mind I very much AM going to get on and do it myself. I'm doing a ten minute spot at The UK Science Comedy Festival on Sunday 14 July, where I'll be talking (at speed) about some of my RESEARCH and then I'm going to try and go out and do MORE of That Sort Of Thing. I'm not exactly sure WHAT or WHERE or HOW - that was what the GRANT BID was meant to help me with - but I'm going to try and find out! And obviously, if anyone out there knows of places where an Early Career Researcher (hem hem) could come and PLY THEIR TRADE talking semi-humorously about DATA and SUPERHEROES and SO FORTH, do please let me know!

posted 28/6/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Who Is Judge Dredd?
Today I am DELIGHTED to UNLEASH upon the world the NEXT PHASE of my mighty research into the world of comics. For LO! After banging on endlessly about Doctor Doom for years and, to a lesser extent, extolling the virtues of The Beano, I am now turning my terrifying gaze upon JUDGE DREDD!

The plan is to use my METHODOLOGY to look at how Judge Dredd has changed and developed over the years since he first appeared in 1977, looking at an example story from 2000AD from every year since then. I'm sticking with 2000AD and not The Megazine or any other places for the sake of SIMPLICITY, and also not doing newspaper strips or games or films or whatnot for similar reasons (and also so I don't have to watch the Sylvestor Stallone movie again). The idea is to look at this one version of the character to see how he WORKS as a character who actually AGES in real-time, how social attitudes change around him, and how he works as an instrument of SATIRE across several decades. I would very much like to do this as an Actual Book at some point - if possible one that costs a NORMAL PRICE rather than mad Academic Publishing prices - but for now this is being done as Something Interesting that I will hope to bang on about at conferences and stuff.

Before I can do any of that, however, I need some DATA and, as anyone who has read my Doctor Doom book will know, the first stage in doing THAT is to ask OTHER PEOPLE who THEY think Judge Dredd is. THUSLY I have set up an online survey to do just that!

SO, if you have a) any awareness of Judge Dredd as a character and b) about twenty minutes spare to spend thinking about him, I would be EXTREMELY GRATEFUL if you could go and have a go at the survey please. It's ANONYMOUS (although you do have the option to give your email address if you'd like to be given updates) and shouldn't take too long, but will be HUGELY helpful for me and my Important Research. Also, if you know anybody else who might like to take it, I would be similar grateful if you could pass it on to them too!

The survey is open until Friday 19 July so you've got a while to do it, and I will be going on about it for the next few weeks on The Socials too. Once that's done it'll be DATA CLEANING time for me, and then hopefully some proper analysis. In the meantime, thanks for listening to this PLEA, and prepare yourself for a couple of years of me saying DROKK and STOMM at any opportunity!

posted 27/6/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Wot I Have Been Reading
Sometimes when I'm at a loose end with no Urgent Tasks I think to myself "what would I most like to do right now?" and the answer is always "Sit and read a book or comic for a bit". It's a really basic thing that I always realise I WANT to do, but for some reason rarely actually DO do. When I used to ROCK around the country a lot one of the nicest things about it was all the time it gave me to sit and READ without worrying that I should be doing something else, despite the fact that I COULD do it a lot more instead of, for instance, glumly scrolling through social media and/or newspaper websites.

THUS of late I have tried to actually DO some reading when I have a spare moment and it has been GRATE. The process had been greatly helped by a) the huge pile of COMICS collections what I have bought recently and b) the release of the Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlist. This latter is something I have got well into over the past few years, as it is a GRATE way to find out about some Exciting New Science Fiction (and also some Rather Dull New Science Fiction) and so I have endeavoured to READ the whole shortlist each year.

This has always brought up some BRILLO new stuff, and this year the ESPECIALLY BRILLO book it has so far given me has been Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tish. This is a PROPER old-fashioned sci-fi story about SPACE MARINES but is also DEAD MOVING and EXCITING and full of ACTUAL CHARACTERS doing INTERESTING THINGS and I flipping loved it. Sadly the fact that is was so full of EXCITEMENT meant that the next book I read, In Ascension, was a huge disappointment as it spent about A MONTH plodding along while some quite dull people had unhappy lives that led to them finding A Big Hole In The Sea. I got about 25% of the way through and gave up - the nice thing about reading on Kindle is that a) it tells you how much you've read quite precisely and b) doesn't feel like such a big deal to just pack a book in when you're fed up with it. Usually the book I find most boring is the one that wins, so if any Prospective Tory Candidates are reading this I suggest you pop down to the bookies now!

After that I read The Ten Per Cent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan, which was somewhere in between. It was RAMMED with a LOT of IDEAS and SATIRE and MORE IDEAS so that it felt very 2000AD-ish, but sadly without much of the actual HUMOUR or Interesting Characters you get in The Galaxy's Greatest Comic. It was like one of those hyper-detailed splash pages that some artists (I'm thinking Chris Burnham, although I know he's not really DONE much 2000AD) do, where there's lots to see but it doesn't really tell a story in itself. It was all right though! I'm now onto The Mountain In The Sea by Ray Nayler, which is ALSO about the sea but in this case moves along at quite a clip and features ROBOTS and also MONSTERS, and so I have high hopes.

MEANWHILE I have also been reading through the big pile of COMICS what I either bought in Brighton OR got with BIRTHDAY VOUCHERS. I've just read the latest collection of Ryan North's "Fantastic Four", which was ACE, and the similarly ACE second volume of "Black Hammer". Sadly I have ALSO finally read "Doomsday Clock", which is probably the worst comic EVER. I say this not because it's incompetently done - it isn't, with perfectly pleasant art and annoyingly Quite Exciting plotting sometimes - but because it is such a horrendous and vile misunderstanding and misappropriation of the original "Watchmen" which it claims to be based on.

There is not NECESSARILY anything wrong with continuations of existing works - I must confess that I have read more than one Jane Austen "continuation" where otherwise perfectly respectable authors have gone "Oh WOW what if the cast of Pride And Prejudice met all of her other characters like an Austen-VERSE but with MURDER" or "Same, but with ZOMBIES" and have very much enjoyed them all. However, these were all done with extremely out of copyright books, and NOT on a series by a living author who has been MASSIVELY RIPPED OFF for decades by the very people who are publishing this new version.

Also, at least PD James et al appear to have READ Jane Austen and GET it (I still contest that Matt Smith in "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies" is the BEST Mr Collins EVER), whereas the people who made "Doomsday Clock" seem to have read it once and gone "Oh yeah, superheroes. How cool would it be if it had SUPERMAN in it too eh?" NOT COOL AT ALL is the answer. There's also loads of annoying crap where they start off TRYING to do the nine-panel grid and self-referential images but then get bored a few issues in and start doing massive splash pages instead. Also none of the previous characters act anything like they did in "Watchmen", there's a complete misunderstanding of how Dr Manhattan's understanding of time ACTUALLY WORKS, and... well, it's a load of old bollocks done by Seasoned Professionals who should know better.

Unfortunately it was also BOUGHT by a long-time comics reader who should ALSO have known better, but hey, I bought it in my post-ARMA AWARD HAZE so will try to be forgiving of myself. I've got the second volume of Al Ewings "Immortal Thor" to go next, I think that'll clear the old Comics Palate a bit!

posted 26/6/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Conferencing At The Seaside
I've spent most of this week so far in sunny (and also occasionally rainy) BRIGHTON at the Association of Research Managers and Administrators Conference. This was a big gathering of people who work on... well, managing and administrating research, mostly in Universities and charities, and THUS I was there in my capacity as someone what does that for a living. It was a whole lot of ACTUAL FUN!

ARMA is a BIG conference, with over 700 people in attendance, spread over several large rooms in a massive seafront hotel. The UAL contingent descended EN MASSE with a DOZEN of us there, including a load of people from my department. We all stayed in the same hotel and hung around together a LOT, and it turned out to be GRATE because they are an EXCELLENT bunch. One of the many things I like about my current job is because I like the people i work with, and whereas in some of my past jobs (NOT ALL!) the idea of hanging around with people from work in NOT work time would fill me with dread, this time it was DELIGHTFUL. The only downside was that over time I became increasingly GARRULOUS and started MENTIONING aspects of my BACKSTORY and unleashing Humorous Remarks to a previously unseen level, so my colleagues may not feel quite the same way about me!

As with all conferences the talks themselves were VARIABLE. I've not been to this conference before and noticed that there was a definite trend towards EXTENDED "A Little Bit About Me" introductions. I am NOT a fan of this sort of thing - as I always say, if I wanted to know more about the lives of people I have never met before I would ASK - and my views were very much re-affirmed here. At one session there were four speakers and the spent ten minutes each - EACH - giving LENGTHY descriptions of their work history - "so I applied for that job but didn't get it which was disappointing but what can you do and then the job came up again and somebody mentioned it but I didn't think I would get it but they said to apply and so I did and what do you know but I got an interview and..." AD INFINITUM. I honestly felt like I was never going to get out!

Others were much better, notably a Keynote from Harriet Beveridge. It was advertised as using "stand up comedy and humour" to help people through research administration work, which filled me with UTTER DREAD but it turned out to not only be DEAD GOOD but also FUNNY, which is a very very difficult thing to do just before lunch in a massive auditorium to several hundred tired-eyed administrators. I LARFED!

The conference also had ACADEMIC POSTERS, which is something I have not been involved with for about a DECADE. Back when I worked at Birkbeck my boss was forever getting me to knock up posters for him and I got quite adept at making them with POWERPOINT. For those not in the know, Academic Posters are MASSIVE great things (A0 in this case) which usually act like a short paper with a big font so people can read it from a distance. However, when the call came round for proposals I thought "Hang on, they don't HAVE to be like that do they? If I did a poster about the benefits of being an administrator who also actually DOES research, I could do it as a COMIC!"

And so that is what I did - titled "The Adventures Of Administrator-who-is-also-a-Researcher" - and it took FLIPPING FOREVER. It turns out that making comics is HARD, especially when you want to make an ACTUAL COMIC that properly follows comics grammar, and not one of those boring ones which are EITHER an illustrated essay OR just a character talking to the audience. It turns out that the REASON academic comics are usually one of the two above is that those are an awful lot easier to do!

Eventually I got it finished, did some PEER REVIEW (i.e. asking my colleagues "does this make me look like a dickhead?") and got it printed off, lugged down to the seaside, and put up with velcro THUS:



As you can see, I was quite pleased with it! If you'd like a closer look it's available to download from UAL's outputs repository along with a VIDEO of me (briefly) explaining it. I spent both lunchtimes standing NEAR it, as you're meant to do that in case people want to ask questions, but to be honest mostly I talked to people about 2000AD! It was all very jolly and was even MORE jolly on the final day when they announced the results of the competition where delegaes could vote for their favourite poster. THIS happened:



I won! I was FLIPPING DELIGHTED I can tell you - I was very very tempted to copy Ronaldo's goal celebration from the night before and run along pointing in the face of other delegates but I just about managed to resist as I feel it would not have come across as PROFESSIONAL. Instead I wandered round the corner to Forbidden Planet and spent too much money on COMICS instead.

It was a BRILL ending to what had turned out to be a FUN few days. Conferences are GRATE!

posted 20/6/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Watching Lady Parts
I've just started watched We Are Lady Parts on the Channel 4 All-4-Player and am really enjoying it, despite having to battle through quite a bit of "They're Getting It Wrong" FURY. For LO! just like pretty much every television show or film about Being In A Band EVER it appears that the people involved have not really BEEN in a band and have almost - but not quite - no clue how it works.

I think it's the Not Quite-ness that annoyed me most, because there are some bits that DO completely get it, like when they're actually playing a song and LOOKING at each other. People in bands LOOK at each other all the time, in my case usually to see whose fault it is that something sounds wrong and then realising it was ME, but also to say "HA! This is GRATE!" That bit feels TRUE and is lovely, but goodness me the actual MECHANICS of most band stuff fall into exactly the same ERRORS that ALL such fictional band stories do, most notably in the way that they write songs together. In one of the episodes I've watched so far the band write a new song by JUST STARTING TO PLAY IT. Nobody says "hang on, what are the chords here?", nobody stops after three bars because they've started at the wrong speed, nobody tries to interrupt by playing a FALL bassline, and worst of all they just write the words there and then taking it in TURNS so to do.

The only time it EVER happens like that is when Paul McCartney does it in "Get Back" which a) is AMAZING b) is a rare and wonderful thing done by an all-time genius and c) will, I greatly fear, only encourage every other music programmes for the next three thousand years to do it the same way.

This has been going on FOREVER - a key historical example is in the film "The Doors" when one of them says "Hey, how about this for an idea for a song?" and just REELS OFF the intro to "Light My Fire" and then we CUT TO THAT EVENING where they've written and learnt the whole thing perfectly. THAT IS INCORRECT. Why oh why oh why can't they ever show the TRUTH, which would involve weeks of Thinking Of A Clever Rhyme In The Shower, writing down lots of different versions, spending HOURS trying to work out what the chords are, and then taking it to a band practice and spending 98% of the time taking the piss out of each other before trying the song, doing it wrong, worrying about it for a MONTH, and then just about getting to the end of it after several goes the next time. I mean, I am not a Hollywood Producer but that sounds like BOX OFFICE GOLD to me!

However, once I managed to CALM DOWN about all that vital and important stuff it was actually really good. I have watched quite a few of The Young Person Sitcoms over the past couple of years, usually on Channel 4, and they ALL seem to have two things in common. Firstly they are all ABOUT something and have SERIOUS ISSUES and UNREPRESENTED COMMUNITIES - I guess you need to have these to get anywhere with the posh people from extremely over-represented communities who commision everything in The Arts. Secondly, they are then all SURPRISINGLY LOVELY. SO many of these shows go "Prepare for THORTS being PROVOKED!" and then give you a lovely soppy twenty minutes about fundamentally delightful young people who really like and support each other, and I am VERY MUCH here for that sort of thing.

Having said THAT though, I did almost stop watching altogether when they went to an "audition" for a Battle Of The Bands that was PRECISELY UNLIKE ANY Battle Of The Bands that has ever existed, but I bravely ploughed through and am back to enjoying it again. I just hope there's an episode soon where they have an lengthy discussion about the difference between MCPS and PRS. This is the good stuff!

posted 6/6/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Up To Date With Modern Telephonic Technology
You find me today at the very CUSP of TECHNOLOGY, as I have been getting my Mobile Telephone fixed! And it has WORKED!

I've had my current phone for about six years now, which feels pretty recent to me but apparently is like lugging around a ZX80 when all the cool kids have got a QL. I use it for Whatsapping my HOMIES, checking my email, and reading the Guardian Live Blog to see if the election's happened yet (SIDEBAR: it is underway now, in case you don't have a Mobile Telephone to tell you), and so the fact that it's a bit old has not generally been a problem. HOWEVER, in recent months that has changed as the memory has started to get completely full up with BLOAT, so I haven't even been able even to take a PICTURE without it bursting into tears.

I have dealt with this in the traditional manner i.e. ignoring it and hoping it mends by itself, which is how I have dealt with another telephone-related issue for DECADES. For LO! when I got my very first phone, over TWO DECADES ago, I signed a contract with a shop in Leicester (I was still living in Leicester, THAT is how long ago it was!) and have been on the exact same contract ever since. For several years WISE COUNSEL has asked "Why are you paying three times as much a month for your phone as you need to?" as many many other DEALS have arisen that were much better, and so FINALLY last month I decided to sort it out.

THUS I spent several happy days going back and forth to our local VODAFONE SHOP, where a succession of Nice Young Men patiently EXPLAINED things to me. They didn't always get it RIGHT but they were so NICE about it all that I didn't really mind, and at the end of it they had SLASHED my monthly phone bill to a THIRD of what it had been, so I was much pleased.

ENERGISED by this success I realised I could probably sort out some other issues too, and so went and bought myself a second SD card. This tiny tiny little piece of TECH boosted the memory of my current phone to more than our ENTIRE ACADEMIC DEPARTMENT had had on ALL of its servers when I got my first one, and so I used it to set about downloading APPS. This was GRATE fun as I've spent the past year or so gradually deleting APPLICATIONS to save memory, but now I was spending it liberally. Why bother GOOGLING how late my train is going to be (because it inevitably IS) when I can have an APP to tell me? Similarly, why look at Twitter Dot Com to find out which "celebrities" my football club has booked for Personal Appearances over summer when THE POSH APP can do it?

The APP that I really wanted to have back was for PODCASTS, but this involved a FURTHER problem. About six months ago the JACK socket on my phone broke, so I had to manually download MP3s of podcasts onto my computer and then physically transfer them onto an MP3 player like some kind of MEDIEVAL SERF. "I can just get that mended," I thought. "How hard can it be?"

QUITE HARD turned out to be the answer, as the local Phone Repair SHops in the shopping centre were all LIGHTWEIGHT operators catering only to FANCY DANS with phones made since the days of lockdown. "Try a local phone shop" one of them said. "But you ARE local", I thought. Anyway, some more GOOGLING brought the realisation that a) London's Fashionable Tottenham Court Road is FULL of local phone shops (that aren't local to me but still) and b) I was going to get my HAIR CUT nearby on Saturday so could pop in.

THUS on Saturday afternoon I handed my phone over to an Earnest Middle-Aged Man in a BOOTH on Tottenham Court Road and wandered off for a haircut. Almost immediately I thought "hang on, I didn't get a receipt for that or anything" and this wasn't helped by the FACE on my hairdresser when I mentioned what I'd done. "I'm sure it'll be fine," he said. SEVERAL TIMES.

It was not perhaps the most relaxing attendance at a SALON ever, but happily once he'd finished and we'd done the traditional Looking At The Back Of My Head In A Mirror, I skipped back down the road to find that all was well and the jack socket was WORKING again! HOORAH! Well done, solid urban craftsman! THUS I am now loading up on about a million different podcasts again and planning LONG WALKS to listen to them. Obviously at the moment it is going to be pretty much ALL ELECTION STUFF, but if anyone has any recommendations for AFTER all that, I would be very pleased to receieve them!

posted 3/6/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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