Heather Ross

Starting his career with Nichols and May, training most of the original cast of SNL and forming Second City, and being the inspiration for the ever popular Upright Citizens Brigade theater (UCB), there isn't a comic working today who wasn't fostered or mentored in some way by Del Close.

Comedy guru Del Close, mentor to everyone from Bill Murray to Tina Fey, sets out to write his autobiography for D.C. Comics. As he leads us through sewers, mental wards, and his peculiar talent for making everyone famous but himself, Close emerges as a personification of the creative impulse itself. He's a muse with BO and dirty needles, offering transcendence despite (or because of) the trail of wreckage behind him.