Cyanide and Happiness

Cyanide and Happiness
Author(s)	Kris Wilson Rob DenBleyker Matt Melvin Dave McElfatrick
Website	http://www.explosm.net/comics RSS web feed
Current status / schedule	Daily, with occasional lapses
Launch date	2005-01-26
Publisher(s)	Explosm
Genre(s)	Anti-humor, Satire, Teen, Dark humor

Cyanide and Happiness is a webcomic hosted on Explosm.net and written by four authors. It was founded on 9 December 2004 and has hosted almost daily comics since 26 January 2005. It appears frequently on social networking sites (such as Myspace and LiveJournal), 4chan, web forums, and blogs as it openly allows and encourages fans to hotlink images, a behavior that many webcomics frown upon as "leeching". The comic's authors attribute the comic's success to its often controversial nature.^[1]

The site has claimed over a million daily visitors (as of November 20, 2006) and is one of the two thousand most viewed pages on the web according to Alexa.com. The creators also have made comics and television advertisements for Orange Mobile's Orange Wednesdays, which have appeared in The Sun newspaper.^[2][3]

Explosm

Cyanide and Happiness began as a small series of comics drawn by Kris Wilson at the age of 16. One day while ill at his home suffering from Streptococcal throat infection, Kris entertained himself by drawing comics by hand, and would later move on to drawing them on his computer. Kris created his own website called Comicazi, that allowed him to showcase his comics to others. Kris shared his comics with the forum of Sticksuicide.com. The webmasters of Sticksuicide (Matt Melvin, Rob DenBleyker and Dave McElfatrick) eventually gave up on StickSuicide and started Explosm.net, a new site less focused on Flash Stick Death animation and more on art in general. They saw potential in Kris' comics, so they used their new site to host his work. Explosm is currently run by Matt, Rob, Dave, Kris and forum administrator Lee Mulvey (known under his forum sign-in name as "Kwanza"). The entire Explosm team excluding Lee now make comics on a regular basis. Most are based on Kris' style, although there are occasional departures from that form. The current name "Cyanide and Happiness" comes from a strip in which one character is selling cotton candy made of cyanide and happyness [sic]. The other character replies: "Happyness!?!? Hot damn! I'll take 4"^[4]

In the past, Explosm has featured Guest Weeks, where readers submit entries to the administrators and the best are featured as daily comics over the course of the week. One notable guest artist is AltF4, animator of the flash animation Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.^[5]

In a news post on the site on October 14, 2007 Rob announced that there was a project about to go underway to translate every comic in the archive into various languages. Based on the response, in a subsequent post Rob said that the response had been phenomenal with 1300 replies offering to translate into over 20 different languages.

During the first comic podcast of April 20, 2009 Rob announced that he'd purchased a domain and the Explosm team will start a website dedicated solely to the little Flash shorts. He mentioned that more information would be coming within a few weeks.

Style

The style of Cyanide and Happiness is best described as dark, cynical, often offensive, and exceedingly irreverent. Frequent topics of humor include disabilities, rape,^[6] cancer, murder,^[7] suicide,^[8] necrophilia,^[9] pedophilia,^[10][11] sexual deviancy,^[12] sexually transmitted diseases,^[13] self-mutilation,^[14] nihilism, and violence.^[15] The comic does not always have a definite punchline in each strip, or may have several panels of "awkward silence"^[16] after (or instead of) the punchline, with characters simply staring at each other.

There are few recurring characters and virtually no characterization, with characters often acting irrationally or nonsensically.

The few recurring characters include peculiarly-named superheroes such as:

• Seizure Man - he apparently suffers from epilepsy, and was made into a man after being raped.
• Ass Rape Man - who was seen approaching a boy and grinning.
• SuperJerk - an extremely rude hero who charges for his acts of kindness.
• Captain Obvious - who points out obvious facts.
• LOL-FAG Man - a parody of Internet slang who insults everyone by saying "LOL FAG", which in turn causes various chaotic acts to occur.
• Punchline Spoiler Man - a hero who appears early in the comic and ruins its joke.
• Rubber Arm Man - a hero with no apparent powers besides two limp, rubbery arms.
• Firework Man - who can make himself explode like a firework, harming only himself
• Education Man - who teaches people about random subjects instead of helping them.
• Prostate Man - who suffers from an enlarged prostate.

Other recurring characters include:

• Trelaf the Wise - a supposed sage who offers pointless advice.
• Obese Maurice - a chubby man that usually adds an odd twist to a food-related joke.
• The Purple-Shirted Eye-Stabber - a villain who occasionally disguises himself to stab out the eyes of any who approach him.

There are two non-superhero characters recurring in the comics drawn by Rob: Charles, an insensitive dimwit, and his girlfriend, who often bears the brunt of his stupidity and abuse. Rob's latest series of strips features a scientist or fictional character such as Aladdin who has sex with an inanimate object, prompting a visit to a surprised doctor.^[17] Also present in Matt's comics is the 'Squeezer', a man who enjoys squeezing breasts every chance he gets. The latest recurring character is Gullboy, who appears in Dave's comics and is a disembodied head who uses his hair as makeshift wings. He was once the head of an old man whose dream was to become a seagull, and was caught in a fish net and thought to be killed on 11/05/2008. On 22/06/2009, Gullboy makes another appearance by landing on an old man's head and attempting to procreate with it. ^[18] Kris sometimes appears in his own comics, wearing a top hat, a white shirt, a black tie, a monocle and a handlebar moustache.

Occasionally, comics are written to meet special occasions. Holidays often feature comics, but more peculiar are occasional "Theme Weeks." These feature cartoons that center around some central theme. Some include "Depressing Comic Week" (in which every comic featured a depressing ending), "Drug Experimentation Week" (when characters were "given" various drugs and reacted to them), and "Contribution Week" (where guests can submit comics to the website). Other gags often run for long periods of time, including a week consisting of bad (or non-existent) knock-knock jokes.

The lack of characterization is supported by the primitive drawing style. Characters rarely have names and are usually only distinguishable by the colors of their shirts. This naturally precludes most character-driven humor.^[1] The male characters almost always have no hair, which became a joke in itself.^[19] Female characters are distinguishable by their long hair and chest size, often used to comedic effect. The strip also features many pop culture references such as Nike and Star Wars and famous characters such as Lindsay Lohan, Steven Tyler, Metallica, The Beatles, and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. Jesus also makes numerous appearances, often with the comic containing religious puns.^[20]

All four artists also occasionally break the fourth wall in unique ways, using the borders of each comic panel as part of the comic itself, allowing the characters within to interact with them in some form or another.^[21] The comics frequently make use of metafiction (or breaking the fourth wall), with characters acknowledging their status as cartoons in a webcomic and discussing what is expected of them as a consequence. ^[22]

On at least two occasions, Kris has used animation in an otherwise static comic. ^[23]

Other Explosm Content

• Since 2006, there have been a total of 19 Flash "Shorts" done by the site administrators, the newest being named "No Brainer". They follow the same theme as the Cyanide and Happiness comics and are drawn in the same style. The characters are, in most instances, voiced by the webmasters themselves.^[24] On occasions, Chase Suddarth from Tomorrow's Nobodies contributes to the shorts.
• The site additionally hosts Joe Zombie, a Flash series by Rob. Flash work by Matt and Dave is also featured on the site.
• Humor articles by all four administrators are regularly featured on the site, with work by Kris, Matt and Dave featured heavily. The newest being "Die Romantic- A Look At Aiden" by Dave, who scathingly critiques goth punk band Aiden.
• Explosm also has a Merchandise store, from which fans can purchase a variety of Cyanide and Happiness T-shirt designs.
• A book was released by Kris Wilson containing his first volume of Cyanide and Happiness comics. Wilson announced on September 6, 2006 that he will be releasing a second volume of Cyanide and Happiness comics.^[25]
• On the forums there was an interactive story where users got to suggest what the main character did. This was created in 2007, with the first comic about a man finding two warring societies inside Mt. Everest. However, due to a site crash, the story (as well as three others) was deleted. A new one was created in late 2007. This was called "Working on the space station: Day 1," and was created by Rob. This turned out to be very successful in the eyes of the Explosm team and future "Interactive Stories" are planned.

Notes and references

External links

• Cyanide & Happiness Archive from Explosm.net