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A friend of mine recently loaned me the trade paperback collecting the first story arc of the comic book The Umbrella Academy. I enjoyed the book by artist Gabriel Ba (Casanova) and writer Gerard Way.

Gerard Way is also the lead singer of My Chemical Romance, a band I was aware of but had never bothered actually listening to. I can't say why, though I'm sure it had something to do with their close association in my mind, if not in reality, with Fall Out Boy -- whose music I had heard and not enjoyed.

Having enjoyed the comic and curious about the music I went to the band's MySpace page, where I was able to listen to a few tracks from their latest album, The Black Parade and see a video for their live CD/DVD.

It's not really my thing -- the mix is a kind of muddy, I probably would have identified a lot more with the screaming angst ten years ago -- but the band does have some tunes and I was intrigued by the balls-out theatricality of it. I'm often shocked any band has the guts to be both as over-the-top dramatic as Pink Floyd or Queen and as earnest as anything you'd find in hardcore in the cynicism of the current media environment. It puts me in mind of The Smashing Pumpkins in that period right up to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. It's hard to explain now to people who weren't there how strange it was, in the midst of the "we're all just ordinary dudes" environment of Grunge, for the Pumpkins to release concept albums, wear elaborate costumes, to be really over-the-top effing rock stars.

And yet you never had the feeling, as you did with groups like Alice Cooper or Marilyn Manson, that the theatricality and its shock value was the largest part of the package. However an egotistical prick he might have been, you always felt that Billy Corgan really meant this stuff. And when you saw him perform it, you often felt like the earnestness must have been emotionally exhausting.

How I'd never heard MCR's stuff is sort of beyond me -- their last album went double-platinum after being released to rave reviews in 2006 and they've been touring on and releasing hit singles from it for the last two years. They've been on magazine covers and won major awards. People have walked past me in their t-shirts for years.

Oh, well.

On YouTube, I could catch up a bit.

Intrigued by what I heard and curious to hear more, I bought the album legally online. It would have been easy enough to simply find it for free online somewhere, but I find I'm much more likely to actually buy an album if, beyond being curious about it, I think that the artist or enterprise is worth supporting financially.

The comic had promoted the band without advertising it, stoking my curiosity about the music. The fact that tracks and videos were available gratis on MySpace made me more curious and gave me a sense of what I could expect. That and the good will created by the comic and MySpace page led me to buy the album rather than rip off the band, feeling that though they weren't going to be my new favorite band Way and his band were doing something worth supporting.

Without a friend loaning me a comic, without websites providing the in that television and radio might have in previous decades, the band might have never come on to my radar -- even with all of its success.