Research in the Arts and Humanities can be terribly lonely. You're usually working on your own rather than in a team, on a topic you're unlikely to share with colleagues, and powered by your own interests rather than any actual funding. That gives you a lot of freedom to work in your own way and follow your instincts, but sometimes you wish that the whole world was interested, just so you had someone to talk to about it.
As I found out, you should be careful what you wish for.
My research is in transmedia characters, and for the last eight years I've been focusing on the Marvel comics character Doctor Doom. I chose him as a case study because his stories act as a cross-section of the shared storyworld of Marvel comics, guest-starring as the villain at some point in almost every series they've ever published, as well as crossing over into games, newspaper strips and cartoons.
Data and Doctor Doom: An Empirical Approach To Transmedia Characters
It's a fascinating topic which I covered first of all in my PhD thesis (yes, that makes me a Doctor of Doctor Doom), my book Data and Doctor Doom, and various research papers. As part of this I developed a unified catalogue of transmedia character components, based on the work of other scholars within comics studies, to examine him and other characters. This led to insights into how superhero storytelling works in a profoundly different way to other genres, and how the memories of fans differ from what was actually in the comics they remember so fondly.
I thought this was fascinating so was disappointed to find that other people weren't hugely interested, largely because the character I'd chosen to talk about was not widely known outside of comics. Doom's rights were tied up with The Fantastic Four, which were owned by Fox, and so though he'd appeared in their previous, failed, attempts to launch superhero franchises he'd never been part of the main Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That all changed on in July 2024 when it was announced that Doctor Doom would be the main villain of the next two Avengers movies, Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. Not only that, but he would be played by Robert Downey Jr, one of the world's biggest movie stars, who had previously played Iron Man in some of the highest grossing films of all time.
Robert Downey Jr reveals himself to fans
This was a massive surprise for fans and a canny move by Marvel, who had had to cancel their original plans to have Kang The Conqueror as their new supervillain when the actor playing him, Jonathan Majors, was found guilty of assault. If they'd just announced that the replacement was Doctor Doom hardly anyone would would have cared, as most people had never heard of him, but bringing back Robert Downey Jr was a clear signal that this was a big deal.
It certainly felt like a big deal to me. After so long studying a fairly obscure character, having him thrust into the limelight like this was like having your local non-league side make it to the FA Cup Final, or having your favourite indie band get into the top ten. Suddenly everyone wanted to talk about Doctor Doom, asking questions and having their own opinions. At last, I thought, other people are interested in my specialist subject!
However, it quickly began to feel less wonderful and more annoying. Where had all of these people been all of those times when I'd been (metaphorically) part of a tiny crowd in the back room of a smelly, or stood in the rain on a Saturday afternoon? My specialist subject was now being confidently discussed by people who had never cared about Doctor Doom until now - how dare they?
Like any sensible lower-league football supporter or indie fan, I had to grudgingly admit that this was just how things work, and that I should be glad that other people were finally enjoying my area of interest. What I found harder to take was the appearance of lots of other people who were now claiming to be experts on Doctor Doom. All at once there were articles and videos popping up all over the internet about him, usually based on personal opinion and vague memories rather than the in-depth analysis I'd been so diligently carrying out.
After all my years of study it looked like I was going to be overtaken by more glamorous or media savvy people, none of whom was an actual Doctor of Doctor Doom. Clearly publishing an academic book and articles wasn't enough to compete with them, so I had to find new ways to get my research across to people.
To that end I started going out and doing public talks about my work, often at 'Science Comedy' nights where academics used jokes to get their research ideas across. I developed this into a one-man musical show based on my book, toured it around fringe festivals and comics conventions, and then adapted the whole thing into a podcast series and soundtrack album, also called 'Data and Doctor Doom'. I even wrote some articles for blogs like this one!
The podcast version of 'Data and Doctor Doom'
And did it work? Last time I checked, if you ask Google 'who is the expert on doctor doom?' it very confidently tells you that it's me, which is at least one good use for AI. Whether that translates into anything else I don't know. It's still about five weeks until the movie finally comes out so there's still time for Robert Downey Jr to get in touch!