January 8, 2008 – If you've read enough comic books, the opening scene from The Umbrella Academy's first issue doesn't seem all that unusual: A tank-size pro wrestler wallops an interterrestrial squid with an atomic elbow, which then causes 43 women around the world to spontaneously give birth to superhero babies. Surreal and bizarre, yes, but par for the course in the feverish, physics-defying universe of men in tights. The real surprise may come in the credits: The series is written by Gerard Way, frontman for My Chemical Romance. Way has never made a secret of his fascination with vigilante crime fighters and mind-controlling mutants: He worked at a comic-book store in New Jersey, studied at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts, and interned at DC Comics before forming MCR in 2001.

July 31, 2007 – On the afternoon of May 30, Jack White called Chicago radio station Q101 in a very bad mood. The White Stripes' frontman was in Spain at the time, but he'd gotten word that the station's DJ Electra had played the band's Icky Thump in its entirety a couple of hours earlier. The album wasn't scheduled to be released for another three weeks, and now a murky copy that somebody recorded off the radio was racing around the Internet. So White called Electra to chew her out for "messing up the entire music business" and for leaking his record, even though it had obviously leaked already -- that's how Q101 got it. The station's music director, Brett "Spike" Eskin, says that a fan from his DJ days in Philadelphia had sent him a link to a file of Icky Thump, which somebody -- no one's saying who -- had uploaded to the file-sharing transfer service YouSendIt.

December 6, 2004 – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus Mute It has to be tough being Nick Cave-coming home at night, taking off your coal-black trench coat, lecturing your lady about the darkness in your soul, calling down a curse from the Lord on the upstairs neighbors, and shooting out the lights. But the black-hole gravity Cave cultivates gives the Australian crooner a solemn authority that recalls his idol Johnny Cash (memorialized here on "Let the Bells Ring"). The pile-driving Abattoir Bluesdisc of this double album opens with one of the greatest songs of Cave's 26-year career, "Get Ready for Love," a torrential rocker about divine love as encroaching terror.