| Cyanide and Happiness | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Kris Wilson Rob DenBleyker Matt Melvin Dave McElfatrick |
| Website | http://www.explosm.net |
| Current status / schedule | Daily, with occasional lapses |
| Launch date | January 26, 2005 |
| Publisher(s) | Explosm |
| Genre(s) | Anti-humor, Black comedy, satire, word humor |
Cyanide and Happiness is a webcomic hosted on Explosm.net and written by four authors with occasional contributions from guests. It was founded on December 9th 2004 and has hosted almost daily comics since January 26th 2005. It appears frequently on social networking sites (such as Myspace and LiveJournal), Facebook, web forums, and blogs as it openly allows and encourages fans to hotlink images, a behavior that many webcomics frown upon. 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 ranked 2,777th among the most viewed websites and 1,338th in the US alone, according to Alexa.com.[2] The creators also have made comics and television advertisements for Orange Mobile's Orange Wednesdays, which have appeared in The Sun newspaper.[3][4]
Contents |
Cyanide and Happiness began as a small series of comics drawn by Kris Wilson at the age of 16. One day while at his home suffering from strep throat, 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 Stickdeath.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 invited him to continue the comic daily with their help. Explosm is currently run by Matt, Rob, Dave, and Kris. The entire Explosm team now makes comics on a regular basis. The current name "Cyanide and Happiness" comes from a strip in which one character is selling cotton candy made of cyanide and happiness. The other character replies: "Happyness!?!? [sic] Hot damn! I'll take 4"[5] 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. 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.
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. Since Dave posted the petition on the Explosm.net forums on July 28, the petition has garnered over 132,000 signatures in less than three weeks.[8] 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 Kris Wilson, Rob DenBleyker, and Matt Melvin.
The style of Cyanide and Happiness is often described as (Asher style) dark, cynical and often offensive, is sometimes interpreted as irreverent. Frequent topics of humor include disabilities, terrorism,[6] rape,[7] cancer,[8][9] murder,[10] necrophilia,[11][12] pedophilia,[13][14] sexual deviancy,[15] sexually transmitted diseases,[16] suicide[17][18], eating disorders[19], abortion[20] and vehicular manslaughter.[21][22] These topics are usually introduced in an unexpected or shocking way that is jarringly different from the natural "obvious" reading on the strip thus far. To paraphrase a common saying, the style could be described as "Practice random violence and senseless acts of pooping." However, this is not always the case, and some family-friendly jokes do exist buried among the offensive material. The comic does not always have a definite punchline in each strip, or may have several panels of "awkward silence"[23] after (of) the punchline, with characters simply staring at each other.
There are some recurring characters (some include Charles & his girlfriend, the Purple-Shirted Eye Stabber, Dr. Baby, Trelaf the Wise, Obese Maurice, superheroes like Seizure Man and Super Jerk, Dan the Downer, and Tall Justin), but otherwise there is a general lack of characterisation. Characters often act irrationally or nonsensically. The lack of characterization is supported by the primitive drawing style, of which the writers often make jokes about. Characters rarely have names and are usually only distinguishable by the colors of their shirts (although they might not exactly be shirts as in the comic published on September 6th 2009, the green character opens his clothing like if it was a coat). This naturally precludes most character-driven humor.[1] The male characters almost always have no hair, which became a joke in itself.[24] 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 people or celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan, George W. Bush,[25] Richard Nixon,[26] Steven Tyler, Metallica, The Beatles,[27] Queen,[28] Barack Obama, Chad Kroeger of Nickelback, Hinder, Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, Chris Martin of Coldplay, and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. Jesus also makes numerous appearances, often with the comic containing religious puns.[29]
All four artists also occasionally break fourth wall, 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.[30][31] 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.[32]
On at least ten occasions, Cyanide and Happiness has used animation in an otherwise static comic.[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]
Aside from purely comedic strips, Cyanide & Happiness has Depressing Comic Weeks. During that week, instead of any kind of humor, the authors write depressing and/or upsetting comics, sort of the opposite of the usual comedy.