Cyanide & Happiness

Cyanide & Happiness first appeared on explosm.net on January 26, 2005, but initial development of the comic started in 2004. According to Matt Melvin, he and Rob DenBleyker had been making stick figure death movies together around 1999 and 2000, and they knew Dave McElfatrick from the stick figure community. Melvin said that Wilson started the style of C&H. The website name "Explosm" came from a domain name DenBleyker was squatting on. Another potential name for the project was "BestWhileHigh.com", an idea Wilson disliked, as he thought it sounded too much like teen zine or 9gag. Wilson said that when he heard the name "Explosm", he thought, "I don't know what you just said, but I love it!" The first animation appeared on explosm.net in April, 2006. == Creators ==

Cyanide & Happiness was started by four cartoonists who were at the time in different locations: in 2006, Rob DenBleyker was a college student at University of Texas at Dallas; Kris Wilson lived in Fort Bridger, Wyoming; Matt Melvin lived in San Diego, California; and Dave McElfatrick lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The creators did not meet each other face-to-face until the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con. On August 31, 2014, Matt Melvin announced that he was no longer part of Cyanide and Happiness. Melvin said in a personal post that he was "pretty depressed over the turn of events. Making comics on the internet for a living was an absolute dream come true. To find myself no longer in that position is awful on multiple levels." Melvin later said in an AMA that the other creators forced him to leave through "a clause in our contract that, in the opinion of myself and all the lawyers I spoke to, was grossly misused" and that he was now forbidden to draw C&H characters. According to explosm.net, Melvin preferred "to focus his talents in web design and project management [and] very rarely worked on the animations. His comic production also scaled down, releasing only three to four per month, and his attention shifted to focus on more personal projects. Eventually Matt stepped down from project management, and in February 2014, left the C&H team entirely. The transition went smoothly, and the Cyanide & Happiness team was able to maintain momentum despite losing a member of the team." Other creators have contributed to the comic and to the animated shorts, such as Chase Suddarth, Joel Watson, Connor Murphy, Zach Prescott, Bill Jones, Mike Salcedo and Shawn Coss. According to their Twitter profiles as of 2021, DenBleyker still lives in Dallas, Texas, and McElfatrick now lives there too, while Wilson lives in Colorado. On August 13, 2025, McElfatrick announced on Facebook that he would be stepping down after 20 years of drawing Cyanide and Happiness comics, and would be pursuing other projects. == Production ==

Publication The webcomic is published daily. According to Explosm, it currently releases a short each week. Many more people are involved in producing the animated shorts than in the comic; as an example one short released in 2017 had twenty-one people credited to its production. == Format and themes ==

Format Each Cyanide & Happiness comic strip varies in length, but are typically three to six panels. The comics are usually static, but some of the comics have animated panels. Setting and characters The comic regularly makes jokes on controversial topics including abortion, mental illness, suicide, AIDS, disabilities, and necrophilia. Female characters are distinguishable by their long hair and chest size, often used to comedic effect. Some recurring characters have names, such as "Obese Maurice", the epileptic superhero "Seizure Man", DenBleyker said that the stick figure style "makes the characters seem very transient, as if they only exist for a given comic", and said that, "'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." In #445, the panel catches on fire and the characters inside panic. In #680, a character has fallen through a broken bottom border of the panel. Influences Wilson and DenBleyker have mentioned the newspaper comic The Far Side by Gary Larson and the webcomic The Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Gurewitch as influences for the comic. Cyanide & Happiness has featured Guest Weeks, where readers submitted entries, and some were featured as daily comics over the course of the week. == Reception ==

Readership figures By April 2006, the website was receiving more than a million visits per week. John Hargrave of the website Zug 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." Awards The book collection Cyanide & Happiness: Stab Factory was nominated for an Eisner Award in the Best Humor Publication category in 2016. Cyanide & Happiness won a Streamy Award in 2015 in the Animated Category, and was nominated again in 2016. == Print collections ==

The first two books were released by Explosm through It Books, a division of HarperCollins. The third and fourth books were 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, while the fourth is another compilation of the artists' favorites. == Television adaptation ==

2012. In addition to the animated shorts created for the website since 2006, the artists created The Cyanide & Happiness Show. This show was created following a Kickstarter in 2013 and premiered in 2014. The first season was released for free online, while for the second season it was picked up by TV network Seeso; later it moved to VRV. The Cyanide & Happiness Show has had four seasons, each of 10–11 episodes. The episodes for the TV versions of the show were 22 minutes long. The animations have been in Adobe Flash format and are typically voiced by the cartoonists. The team hired contributors from the United States, India and South Korea for various processes. == Game adaptations ==

Joking Hazard In February 2016, Explosm started a Kickstarter project for a Cyanide & Happiness card game titled Joking Hazard, in which each card is a possible panel of a comic and the players must attempt to produce a humorous combination. The project's funding finished with over $3.2 million USD in backings, and at the time was the second most funded card game in Kickstarter history after Exploding Kittens. Joking Hazard was released in 2016; and the game has an average user rating of 6.4 out of 10 on BoardGameGeek. In April 2025, the game became available as a playable app on mobile devices. Trial by Trolley In June 2019, another Kickstarter campaign for a card game project was launched, developed in collaboration with Skybound Entertainment, titled Trial by Trolley. The game is an adaptation of the trolley problem in philosophy where a player must choose a track to send an out of control trolley down. The campaign raised over US$3.5 million. Trial by Trolley was released in 2020 and it also has a 6.4 out of 10 rating on BoardGameGeek. Rapture Rejects In November 2018, Explosm Games, along with developer studio Galvanic Games and publisher tinyBuild, released Rapture Rejects to Steam as an early access game. Rapture Rejects is a battle royale style game. The developers stated that they planned to release the game in early 2020, but the game remained in early access, and is no longer available for sale. Freakpocalypse In September 2017, Explosm began another Kickstarter for a Cyanide & 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. The game was slated to be released near the end of 2018 but was later pushed to 2019, then delayed again to 2020 and then again until "early 2021". The game's title was announced in March 2020 to be Cyanide & Happiness: Freakpocalypse Part 1 – Hall Pass to Hell. The first part of the game was released on March 11, 2021. Master Dater In March 2022, Explosm began Gamefound for a new Cyanide & Happiness card game titled Master Dater. It was released on February 14, 2023. Texas Hold it In November 2024, Explosm released a new Cyanide & Happiness card game titled Texas Hold it. It was released on November 25, 2024. == Other adaptations ==

Explosm released a Cyanide & Happiness mobile app in 2013. The free "Lite" version allowed the user to access the last 30 days of the archive. Cyanide & Happiness characters were used in the television advertisements for Orange Mobile's Orange Wednesdays, though in an interview Matt Melvin said the characters in the ads "weren't really C&H characters, but were definitely based on them." Merchandise sold by Cyanide and Happiness includes T-shirts, figurines, housewares, school supplies, signed prints, and a beer. == Other works by the creators ==

DenBleyker made his first animated series called Joe Zombie, which lasted six episodes, and left fans to anticipate a seventh, where he stated "will come out eventually". McElfatrick wrote Die Romantic – A Look At Aiden, which scathingly critiques goth punk band Aiden. After leaving the Cyanide and Happiness team, Melvin started a new webcomic, titled The Last Nerds on Earth. and McElfatrick going solo on his own band, We've Got Hostiles. McElfatrick also produces his own YouTube videos, where he reviews games, and chats with friends, such as Gus Johnson. DenBleyker and Dave McElfatrick wrote and starred in a series called Purgatony followed by its spin off Purgatony Presents: Dead Air and The Stockholms within that same year. ==References==