Explore every episode of the podcast Data and Doctor Doom

In this first episode MJ Hibbett - the world's leading (and only) academic expert on Doctor Doom - delves into the secret origin of Doctor Doom and explains why he's better than Batman, reveals his own secret origin story, pays tribute to legendary comic shop 'The House On The Borderland', and explains why it matters to take an empirical, evidence-based approach to arts and humanities research.

Featured songs:

• Like Batman But Better
• The House On The Borderland
• An Empirical Approach To Transmedia Characters

Links:

• Data and Doctor Doom: An Empirical Approach To Transmedia Characters (the book)
• The Funny Comics Fan Club
• MJ Hibbett's research page

'Data and Doctor Doom' is a five-part weekly podcast series in which Indie legend MJ Hibbett PhD - the world's leading (and only) academic expert on Doctor Doom - tells you all you need to know about the MCU's next big baddie. 

The series is a musical adaptation of MJ's PhD thesis (yes, that makes him a Doctor of Doctor Doom). It uses songs, jokes, and a thirteen-dimensional unified catalogue of transmedia character components, to show how Doctor Doom can be explained using empirical analyses, how this can be applied to all fictional characters, and why on earth you'd want to do that.

'Data and Doctor Doom' started off as a one-man musical which MJ toured around the UK during 2025, but with the release of 'Avengers: Doomsday' imminent he thought it was time to make it available to the whole world. The first episode will be available from all podcast platforms on Tuesday 28 July, with others to follow weekly after that.

You can find further details, including links to MJ's original research, at www.dataanddoctordoom.com