Cyanide & Happiness

Cyanide & Happiness (C&H) is a webcomic written and illustrated by Rob DenBleyker, Kris Wilson, Dave McElfatrick and formerly Matt Melvin,[1][2][3] published on their website explosm.net. It was created and started running daily on January 25, 2005. It has appeared on social networking sites such as Myspace, Quora, LiveJournal, and Facebook, where, in April 2006, it had generated more than a million visits per week.[4]

Cyanide & Happiness
Author(s)Kris Wilson
Rob DenBleyker
Dave McElfatrick
Matt Melvin (until 2014)
Websitewww.explosm.net
Current status/scheduleDaily
Launch dateJanuary 25, 2005
Publisher(s)Explosm
Genre(s)Black comedy, satire, surreal humor, paronomasia, sketch comedy, adult animation

The comic's authors attribute its success to its often controversial nature,[4][5] and the series is noted for its dark humor and sometimes surrealistic approach. Cyanide & Happiness characters were used in the television advertisements for Orange Mobile's Orange Wednesdays.[6]

Conception

Cyanide & Happiness began as a small series of comics drawn by Kris Wilson at the age of sixteen. Wilson was at home with strep throat and had doodled some stick figure comics.[7] On his DeviantArt profile page, he notes that he "created Cyanide & Happiness in 2004 because I can't help but draw stupid looking characters to spew out my stupid ideas."[8] He showcased his comics on his Comicaze website,[9] and then on Sticksuicide.com, "a website devoted to animations and games graphically depicting the violent deaths of stick figures", which was founded by Rob DenBleyker in 2004.[10]

Meanwhile, DenBleyker and Matt Melvin had been working on projects where they "made bad stick figure death movies together after posting their stuff at Newgrounds back in around 1999 and 2000." The forum's webmasters, including DenBleyker, Melvin, and Dave McElfatrick (who joined Sticksuicide) liked the format of Wilson's comics. Melvin said, "When we decided to branch off from just stick figure death movies and do something more with the site, we started Explosm and brought Kris on board."[11] The name "Explosm" came from a domain name DenBleyker was squatting on; alternative potential names for the project included "BestWhileHigh.com", an idea Wilson thoroughly disliked, as he thought it sounded too much like teen zine, or 9gag.[12][9] When DenBleyker suggested Explosm, Wilson thought, "I don't know what you just said, but I love it!"[13] Wilson and the webmasters then collaborated on the comics, where each person contributed content. One of the earliest Cyanide & Happiness comics, #15, was posted by Wilson on Explosm.net on January 26, 2005.[7][lower-alpha 1] A variant of the comic's title is first mentioned in #121, in which one character sells cotton candy, and explains that it is made of "Cyanide & Happyness" [sic], after which the other character replies: "Happyness!?!? Hot damn! I'll take 4".[lower-alpha 2]

Production
Rob DenBleyker and background artist Shawn Coss, Toronto, 2012

Development

The cartoonists started out in different locations: In 2006, DenBleyker was a college student at University of Texas at Dallas.[4] Wilson lived in Fort Bridger, Wyoming,[note 1] Melvin in San Diego, California, and McElfatrick in Belfast, Northern Ireland.[5][14] They also used Skype for occasional collaboration.[7] Melvin said, "We collaborate here and there on them, but the comics are most often individual efforts. The animated shorts, however, are big collaborative projects, often bringing in people from outside our little, core group."[15] Although they started working on the project in 2004, the authors did not meet each other face-to-face until the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con.[10]

Format

The format of Cyanide & Happiness is typically a single page where the cartoonist posts his comic. The page can vary in length and number of panels. The drawings are done in Macromedia Flash.[4] Although generally static, some of the comics have animated panels.[16] Others break the fourth wall; for instance, in #375, one of the characters looks at the reader, and the other asks what he is looking at. He then looks out and says "Holy shit! It's a person!"[lower-alpha 3] In #445, the panel catches on fire and the characters inside panic.[lower-alpha 4] In #680, a character has fallen through a broken bottom border of the panel.[lower-alpha 5]

Influences

Wilson and DenBleyker have mentioned the traditional comic The Far Side by Gary Larson and the webcomic The Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Gurewitch as influences for the comic.[7] Wilson mentioned Don Hertzfeldt, Bill Hicks, White Ninja Comics, Monty Python, and David Wong as influences.[5] At a Davenport College panel, DenBleyker commented that he writes for up to ten hours a day and collaborates with friends,[10] however, in April 2013, he tweeted to replace "reading classic philosophy texts" with "sitting in my car crying".[17] McElfatrick was inspired by old British children's comics such as The Beano and The Dandy.[5] Melvin did not read comics as a kid, but enjoyed Larson's The Far Side and Matt Groening's Life in Hell; he preferred live-action sketch comedy shows such as The Kids in the Hall, Monty Python, Upright Citizens Brigade, and Mr. Show.[5]

Setting and characters

The cartoonists regularly make jokes on controversial topics including abortion, madness, suicide, and AIDS.[10] Their characters rarely have names and are usually only distinguishable by the colors of their shirts. The male characters almost always have no hair, which became a joke in itself in #642.[lower-alpha 6] Female characters are distinguishable by their long hair and chest size, often used to comedic effect. Jesus makes appearances, accompanied with religious puns.[lower-alpha 7] Some recurring characters have names, such as "Obese Maurice" and the epileptic superhero "Seizure Man".[18] DenBleyker added that the stick figure style "makes the characters seem very transient, as if they only exist for a given comic. 'Cyanide and Happiness' prides itself on having no characters or themes. If we ever bring up a character, we usually retire it after its share of original jokes has run out."[4]

Publication

One of the cartoonists' strips is featured on a single page for the day. Melvin says that they "keep a schedule of sorts, but it's nothing completely set in stone."[11] Wilson credits the comic's success to consistent output: "There are plenty of funny people creating content, but they're not consistent or reliable. The Internet has ADD, and if you're not constantly giving them something new, you're going to lose them."[7]

Events

On occasion, the Cyanide & Happiness cartoonists have featured Depressing Comic Weeks, where they wrote depressing and/or upsetting comics. In an interview, Melvin said, "we'd made comics that were funny because of how dark they were. But now DCW is just about making really sad comics with no punchline whatsoever."[15] The December 30th episode of the Cyanide and Happiness Show featured the "depressing episode" - coinciding with the 8th depressing comic week at explosm.net.

Cyanide & Happiness has featured Guest Weeks, where readers submitted entries, and some were featured as daily comics over the course of the week.

On October 14, 2007, Wilson announced a desire for every comic in their archive to be translated into other languages. In a subsequent post, he reported a "phenomenal" 1300 replies with offers to translate into over 20 different languages.

In 2010, author Dave McElfatrick, a Northern Ireland native, started a petition for a visa into the United States, in order to be with the other writers to produce more animated shorts. The petition garnered over 132,000 signatures in less than three weeks.[19] On September 1, 2010, it was officially announced that Dave qualified for the visa that would allow him to enter the United States to work on more comics and animated shorts with Wilson, DenBleyker, and Melvin. On August 31, 2014, Matt Melvin announced that he was no longer part of Cyanide and Happiness.[20]

Reception

John Hargrave of zug.com said that "Despite all this solo effort, the end product is coherent and strangely logical, as if the four creators were each viewing the peculiar world of C&H from a slightly different angle -- a world in which disembodied heads turn into seagulls, and Jesus is a designated driver."[7]

DenBleyker has mentioned that the comic's popularity grew from their sharing policy, "which encourages readers to repost and re-blog comics, effectively allowing anyone to spread Cyanide and Happiness' content."[10] In January 2006, the comic was getting about 20,000 unique visitors a day, but "we added a little box under each comic which allows people to post an Explosm-linked version of the comic, which brings a lot of traffic back to us. After we put that box up, the traffic started exploding." After a few days, the comic received about 300,000 unique visitors a day, which consisted of mostly traffic from MySpace and LiveJournal blog links.[4]

In response to the question regarding controversial topics, DenBleyker said that the authors have not received a huge amount of serious negative feedback and do not intend to tone down the edginess of their comics.[10] Melvin notes that some of the respondents have criticized them on one topic, but at the same time praised them for a different one.[15]

Media

Books

The first two books are released by Explosm through It Books, a division of HarperCollins. The third and fourth books are published by Boom! Box, an imprint of Boom! Studios. The first two volumes each feature 120 of the artists' favorite Cyanide & Happiness comics, and 30 previously unpublished comics. The third volume featured many Cyanide & Happiness comics from their Depressing Comic Weeks with 40 previously unpublished comics,[21] while the fourth is another compilation of the artists' favorites.

No.TitleDateLengthISBN
1Cyanide & HappinessOctober 29, 2009[22]160ppISBN 978-0061914799
2Ice Cream & Sadness: More Comics from Cyanide & HappinessOctober 5, 2010[23][24]176ppISBN 978-0062046222
-[note 2]The Cyanide & Happiness Depressing Comic BookDecember 2012[21]89ppISBN 978-1939355003
3Punching ZooDecember 2013[25]89ppISBN 978-1608864737
4Stab FactoryNovember 17, 2015[26]192ppISBN 978-1608867691

Animation
A variety of Cyanide and Happiness merchandise being sold at Fan Expo Canada 2012.
Main article: The Cyanide & Happiness Show

In addition to creating Cyanide & Happiness comic strips, the cartoonists have done animations drawn in a similar stick figure style. As of September 2020, there have been four full seasons of The Cyanide and Happiness Show (for a total of 41 episodes), and shorter cartoons continue to be produced weekly (and sometimes more often than that). The animations are in Adobe Flash format and are typically voiced by the cartoonists.[27] Chase Suddarth contributes occasionally to the shorts. DenBleyker made a series called Joe Zombie, which lasted six episodes, and left fans to anticipate a seventh, where he stated "will come out eventually".[28]

Other media

Explosm has worked on other webcomics, animation shorts and projects. McElfatrick wrote Die Romantic - A Look At Aiden, which scathingly critiques goth punk band Aiden. After leaving the Cyanide and Happiness team in November 2014, Melvin started a new webcomic, titled The Last Nerds on Earth.[29]

Explosm released a Cyanide & Happiness app for mobile devices in 2013.[30] The free "Lite" version allows the user to access the last 30 days of the archive.[31] The Cyanide and Happiness team offer a selection of merchandise, including T-shirts, toys, novelties, housewares, and school supplies.[32] The Explosm website also sells signed prints.[16]

On February 9, 2016, Explosm started a Kickstarter project for a Cyanide & Happiness card game titled Joking Hazard, in which cards represent panels of a 3-panel comic and the players must attempt to form a humorous combination. The project's funding finished on March 10, 2016, with over $3.2 million USD in backings. Joking Hazard is currently the second most funded card game in Kickstarter history, after Exploding Kittens.[33][34][35]

On September 5, 2017, Explosm began another Kickstarter for a Cyanide and Happiness video game with a goal of $300,000, earning over $575,000. The game is described to borrow elements from games such as South Park: The Stick of Truth, and throughout backing players could pledge to put themselves in the game via different ways, such as a "memorial wall", a permanent school record, a grave stone or even become an actual NPC. The game was slated to be released near the end of 2018 but had been pushed to 2019, with it being delayed a third time to 2020.[36] The game was officially announced on March 17, 2020 at the Nintendo Indie World Showcase with the title Cyanide & Happiness: Freakpocalypse Part 1 - Hall Pass to Hell, set for release on Nintendo Switch and PC in Summer 2020.[37][38]

On November 29, 2018, Explosm Games, along with developer studio Galvanic Games, and publisher tinyBuild released Rapture Rejects, a battle royale style game, set in the Cyanide and Happiness universe, was released for Windows on Steam, in early access.

On June 8, 2019, another Kickstarter campaign for a card game project was announced, developed in collaboration with Skybound Entertainment, titled "Trial By Trolley." An adaptation of the Trolley problem where a player must choose a track to send an out of control trolley down, the campaign concluded on August 7, 2019, reaching a total of over $3.5 million USD in backings.[39]

Notes
  1. According to his DeviantArt page, Wilson has since moved to Fort Collins, Colorado.
  2. Depressing Comic Book was not a numbered volume.

References

Comics references
  1. Wilson, Kris (January 26, 2005). "Cyanide & Happiness #15". Cyanide & Happiness. Explosm.net.
  2. Wilson, Kris (April 15, 2005). "Cyanide & Happiness #121". Cyanide & Happiness. Explosm.net.
  3. DenBleyker, Rob (November 21, 2005). "Cyanide & Happiness #375". Cyanide & Happiness. Explosm.net. Retrieved January 11, 2013. What are you looking at? ... Holy shit it's a person!
  4. DenBleyker, Rob (February 17, 2006). "Cyanide & Happiness #445". Cyanide & Happiness. Explosm.net. Retrieved January 11, 2013.
  5. Wilson, Kris (October 6, 2006). "Cyanide & Happiness #680". Cyanide & Happiness. Explosm.net. Retrieved January 11, 2013.
  6. DenBleyker, Rob (August 28, 2006). "Cyanide & Happiness #642". Cyanide & Happiness. Explosm.net. Retrieved June 10, 2010.
  7. McElfatrick, Dave (September 15, 2005). "Cyanide & Happiness #312". Cyanide & Happiness. Explosm.net. Retrieved June 10, 2010.

General references
  1. "Contact". Explosm.net. Archived from the original on 2014-03-07.
  2. "Contact". Explosm.net. Archived from the original on 2014-03-14.
  3. "I am No Longer Part of Cyanide and Happiness". August 31, 2014.
  4. Johnson, Phill (January 2, 2010). "Student draws explosive web comic". The Mercury - University of Texas Dallas. Archived from the original on February 24, 2010. Retrieved January 10, 2013.
  5. O'Shea, Tim (March 29, 2010). "Talking Comics with Tim: Cyanide & Happiness' Kris, Matt & Dave". Robot 6 : Talking Comics with tim. Comic Book Resources.
  6. Woods, Sarah (July 18, 2006). "Orange unveils cartoon stick man print campaign". Brand Republic. Retrieved 2013-01-10.
  7. Hargrave, John (March 5, 2010). "Kris Wilson is the Picasso of Exploding Stick Figures". zug.com. Archived from the original on January 22, 2013. Retrieved January 10, 2013.
  8. Wilson, Kris. "kris-wilson on DeviantArt". DeviantArt.com. Retrieved January 10, 2013.
  9. "Top 10 Plane Crashes (with Kris Wilson from Cyanide & Happiness)". Audioboom. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
  10. Medina-Tayac, Sebastian (October 16, 2012). "Cyanide and Happiness founder talks web humor". Yale Daily News.
  11. Xerexes, Xaviar (December 17, 2007). "Get Happy! An Interview with Matt Melvin". comixtalk.com. Archived from the original on January 28, 2012.
  12. "Kris Wilson stating why he disliked BestWhileHigh.com". Discord.
  13. "Kris Wilson stating why he liked the name Explosm". Discord.
  14. Katz, Farley (February 18, 2009). "Interview - Cyanide and Happiness". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 10, 2013.
  15. Flux, Elizabeth (June 6, 2012). "Q & A WITH MATT MELVIN FROM CYANIDE AND HAPPINESS". Subterraean Death Cult.com. Retrieved January 10, 2013.
  16. Melvin, Matt (December 6, 2012). "Even MORE signed prints!". Explosm. Explosm.net. Retrieved January 11, 2013. (Print obviously not animated, but how cool would that be?)
  17. Rob DenBleyker [@RobDenBleyker] (April 20, 2013). "C&H wiki wrongly says I write comics by "reading classic philosophy texts", someone pls replace with "sitting in my car crying". Source: me" (Tweet). Retrieved May 9, 2013 – via Twitter.
  18. Chivers, Tom (2009-11-06). "The 10 best webcomics, from Achewood to XKCD". Telegraph.co.uk.
  19. "Hey guys, REALLY need your help! - The Explosm Fora". Archived from the original on 2 August 2010. Retrieved 28 July 2010.
  20. "I am No Longer Part of Cyanide and Happiness".
  21. "Depressing Comic Book". Explosm.net. Retrieved January 10, 2013.
  22. Wilson, Kris; Melvin, Matt; Denbleyker, Rob; McElfatric, Dave (2011-01-04). Cyanide and Happiness. ISBN 9780062043641. Retrieved January 10, 2013.
  23. Wilson, Kris; Melvin, Matt; Denbleyker, Rob; McElfatric, Dave (2011-01-04). Ice Cream & Sadness: More Comics from Cyanide & Happiness (Google eBook). ISBN 9780062075819. Retrieved January 10, 2013.
  24. "Ice cream & sadness : cyanide & happiness". Library of Congress Catalog Record. Library of Congress. Retrieved January 10, 2013.
  25. "Punching Zoo". Explosm.net. Retrieved January 28, 2014.
  26. "Stab Factory". Explosm.net. Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved September 25, 2015.
  27. "List of Explosm.net Flash Movies". Explosm.net. Archived from the original on 2009-03-29. Retrieved 2009-04-01.
  28. "Yes, another Joe zombie question... - The Explosm Fora". Forums.explosm.net. Archived from the original on 2013-02-21. Retrieved 2012-10-22.
  29. Leblanc, Jane R. (2014-11-10). "Cyanide & Happiness Show Premieres Live This Wednesday at Alamo Drafthouse". Dallas Observer.
  30. "The Explosm Store - Mobile Apps". Explosm Store. Exposm.net. Retrieved January 11, 2013.
  31. "Cyanide and Happiness Lite". iTunes. Apple. Retrieved January 11, 2013.
  32. "Fourth Castle Signs "Cyanide & Happiness"". licensemag.com. Advanstar Communications. March 24, 2012. Archived from the original on February 20, 2013. Retrieved January 11, 2013.
  33. Monroe, Nick (2016-03-04). "Cards Against Hilarity - Small Parts of Joking Hazard". The Escapist.
  34. Hurst, Samantha (2016-03-12). "Cyanide & Happiness' Joking Hazard Named Second Most Funded Card Game on Kickstarter". Crowdfund Insider.
  35. "Update 29: THANK YOU!! · Joking Hazard". Kickstarter. Retrieved 2016-03-22.
  36. "Update 35: THE WORLD IS ENDING BUT DEVELOPMENT ISN'T! · The Cyanide & Happiness Adventure Game". Kickstarter.
  37. "Nintendo Switch - Indie World Showcase 3.17.2020". YouTube. Retrieved 2020-03-18.
  38. "Cyanide & Happiness - Freakpocalypse - Announcement Trailer - Nintendo Switch". YouTube. Retrieved 2020-03-18.
  39. "Trial By Trolley Kickstarter Page".
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