Stella

You Know Them As Three-elevenths of the mid-Nineties MTV sketch show The State, a cult favorite. "I love all the mystique about The State," says series vet Michael Ian Black. "I think people remember the show being better than it actually was, because nostalgia builds a fondness for things."

The Breakthrough After performing a hit underground comedy revue in Manhattan for eight years, Stella -- composed of Black, Michael Showalter and David Wain -- have been tapped to bring their antic sensibilities to Comedy Central this summer in a half-hour skit series. Expect an off-the-cuff Marx Brothers-meets-Monty Python vibe. "We're not conventional but not deliberately edgy, either," Black says. "We felt we'd already explored the universe of dildos and necrophilia about as fully as it could be explored."

Why Stella? "Because it's critical to inject our material with any kind of Tennessee Williams reference we can," Black deadpans.

Inspiration "Mostly we play poker and chitchat," Black says. "It's eighty percent chitchat, forty percent poker, nine percent typing and two percent harmonizing."