Blog Archive: September 2025

Independent Podcast Awards Shortlist
As anybody who knows me will be well aware, I care little for the tawdry baubles of acclaim what garland a career in showbusiness. Awards and the like are of little concern to me, and that is entirely because of my lofty principles and definitely not because nobody ever gives me any.

However it is always nice for one's colleagues to be recognised in such a fashion and so it is in this spirit that I mention that The Funny Comics Fan Club, the podcast that myself and Mr J Dredge do, has been shortlisted for The Independent Podcast Awards! We have been shortlisted for our theme tune in the 'Best Jingle' section, which is rather wonderful, not least because apparently they're going to be playing the jingles throughout the awards ceremony at Kings Place next month.

Yes all right I admit it, I am dead excited about the whole thing and would love it if we won. I'm not sure if we're going to be able to actually GO to the event or anything, but it's a lovely thing to have as we prepare to unleash season THREE on a waiting world in the new future. "Award Nominated" has a lovely RING to it for the press releases!

posted 12/9/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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The Future Of Retail
You find me today mildly POLEAXED by RETAIL EFFICIENCY, for LO! I have been making administrative moves on a whole HEAP of forthcoming commercial ventures.

The main part of all this is the forthcoming release of Data and Doctor Doom - The Zine which I have just this very day sent off to the printers. It's a 32 page booklet PACKED with articles and also ILLUSTRATIONS by me about issues pertaining to Data and Doctor Doom, including explanations of how it came to be, how it works, and various Artistic Decisions what I took. The idea is that this is some MERCH which I can sell on my forthcoming trips to The Lakes International Comic Art Festival and Leeds for people who want to know MORE about what it's all about.



"Hang on there Hibbett", you may think, "this is all well and good, but how do you expect to conduct these transactions? The world has changed since last you had Physical Product for sale, it's not all used fivers now you know!" This is an excellent point and one I have grappled with by getting myself one of those CARD READER thingies. It arrived yesterday and I've just been setting it up - after years of seeing people on market stalls looking TERRIFIED every time you try to use one I now understand exactly they you feel, having sat looking at mine in FEAR and AWE.

"All right," you may continue, "but what of those of us who can't make it to such glamorous places as Leeds and/or The Lake District? How may we purchase this intriguing yet (I assume) reasonably priced artefact?" This too is all in order - INDEED I have made multiple provisions for purchase to hopefully cater to all needs!

Firstly, later this month there'll be a new page on the shop where UK residents can order a physical copy of the zine, along with a range of FREE GIFTS. I usually send out free stuff with orders, mostly because of my extreme generosity but also in an ongoing bid to free up some cupboard space, so thought it might be nice to offer a CHOICE of items people can go for this time. I don't know what these will be yet as I've not ventured into the cupboard for a while, but there will be several different CDs available, including an option to not have any if you've already got them all!

You will note that I say "UK residents" above - the actions of various World Leaders over the past few years have meant that it's ridiculously expensive and complicated to send things abroad from here now and, to be quite honest, I can't be doing with the hassle. HOWEVER! There is a DIGITAL option which will be available, tied in with YET ANOTHER product coming your way soon.



For LO! Later this month I shall be releasing a NEW SINGLE and VIDEO based on the song "Like Batman But Better"! The initial idea of this was as a way to promote the forthcoming run of shows, especially the Lambeth Fringe one in October as I need to sell some tickets for it, but it's also now cunningly wrapped up in the ZINE sales. For LO! (again) although the Spotify version of the single will just be that one song, the BANDCAMP version will feature a b-side ("The Where, What, How And Whom Of Doctor Doom") AND a free download of the zine! There'll also be a Bandcamp option where UK people can buy the zine THERE and get the single thrown in too, so hopefully that'll keep EVERYONE happy!

Phew! It's all quite a lot of COMMERICAL ACTIVITY as you can see, thus hopefully explaining the aforementioned POLEAXED nature of my being. I'm planning to UNLEASH it all on the last working day of the month, so if you haven't already do please sign up for the newsletter to find out when it's all ready to go!

posted 11/9/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Zine Machine
For the past few weeks I have been toiling away at making a ZINE for the next batch of Data and Doctor Doom shows.

There are mulitple THORTS behind this, the first one being that I'm off to play a couple of festivals soon and so I thought it'd be nice to have some MERCH to sell. Long experience has shown me that there's no point at all in trying to flog MERCH at Fringe gigs, as people usually rush off as soon as your show's finished to see something else, but that people DO sometimes want to buy stuff at festivals. My initial idea was to try and record all the songs for a CD, but to be perfectly honest I could not be arsed so to do. Also, I have another IDEA for what to do next with the songs and indeed the talking which I'd rather do instead, more news of which ANON!

Another driver was the fact that I recently attended a comics conference and caused a minor FURORE by suggesting people stop moaning and just got on and DID some stuff without waiting around for permission from somebody else. Obviously once I'd said this people asked what *I* was going to do, so I had to come up with something! My initial idea was to do an ACADEMIC ZINE but, as with the previous idea of recording a whole album, 2 seconds thinking told me that this would be a LOT of work, so instead I decided to just do a zine myself about the show. To be more precise, I thought it'd be good to have something that EXPLAINED some of the ideas that I didn't have time to go into AND/OR went into some of the issues that have been raised by DOING the show.

This all led onto the THIRD motivation for doing it, which was that it was Actually Quite Good Fun. Writing the various articles was all right, but the FUN has arisen mostly from the decision to ILLUSTRATE it with some of my own DRAWINGS. Last year I created a comic strip poster for work which was a) FUN b) a LOT of work, so I thought I would try and focus on the former aspect rather than the latter and do some spot illustrations. This has been LOVELY, and I'm now thoroughly enjoying tinkering around with the layout to make it all look ACE.

The PLAN is to get these finished in the next week or so, so that I've got time to get them printed ready for my appearance at The Lakes International Comic Art Festival at the end of the month, but I'm also planning to make it available to buy online. I'm THINKING of doing various options, including a PDF version for non-UK people (now that various TWITS have made it expensive and difficult to send things abroad), but I'll see how it all goes. Either way, there should be an announcement in the next issue of the newsletter, and possibly more discussion of PRINTING efforts here! THRILLZ!!

posted 5/9/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Two (2) New Songs
As anyone what is following me on the socials will be aware, I have spent much of this year re-posting and commenting on some of my old blogs from the space year 2003. This has been a DELIGHT for me as I have been reminded of all sorts of LARKS, but it has also shown me that I have fallen behind in some of the Old Ways Of Blogging.

Primarily it has shown me that I used, long ago, to get all excited about having written a new song and dash to Blogger (for such it was back then) to tell people about it. I don't really do that anymore, in part because my songwriting has slowed down massively since then, but as I've written a couple of new songs this week I thought I would have a go at speaking about them.

The first of these is Time Wasters Need Not Apply which, as the accompanying song notes say, came as a result of REFLECTING on a) the lovely gig me and Chris did in Brighton and b) Alan Jenkins' amazing book How To Be In A Pop Group. Basically, I wanted to write another story song, and Alan's book reminded me of being in bands in Leicester in the early 90s, where you'd sometimes meet people who were always going to form AMAZING bands but never did. It is, I think, a bit of a WEEPY, and so I am looking forward to getting it out into the world and seeing if I'm right.

The second song is called Goodness Knows I've Been Good and is very much in the rich vein of Me Attempting And Failing To Do A Country And Western Song. I don't think this one is quite as likely to cause mass outpourings of EMOTIONS, but it is VERY catchy and I have been singing it around the flat all week!

I've know idea when or indeed IF these songs will get out into the live environment, let alone recorded, but it's lovely to have my brain working in this way again, and I have high hopes for MORE SONGS soon-ish! Also, this is a reminder to me in the futuristic year of 2047 to do some more too!

posted 4/9/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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