Cyanide & Happiness

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

A variety of Cyanide and Happiness merchandise being sold at Fan Expo Canada 2012.

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]

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]