Mike Salcedo and Rob DenBleyker are the creative minds behind the Cyanide and Happiness comics and cartoons, and they have been for the past fifteen years. Their umbrella company Explosm was founded in 2008 once the brand started to pick up and gain recognition, and the guys realized they would be working on other projects as well.
One of their most recent projects is the animated series The Stockholms, which has been airing its first ten-episode season on Youtube over the last several weeks. We got the opportunity to speak exclusively with the guys who make these series happen. When learning about their other projects, they told us a bit about their card games and upcoming video game, Freakpocalypse.
Freakpocalypse launches this year for PC and Nintendo Switch, with a potential release for other consoles in the future. Fans of point-and-click games such as Monkey Island and Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town or anyone familiar with the Cyanide and Happiness universe will undoubtedly want to check it out.
Check out our chat with the guys to learn more about these other projects and click the podcast player below to hear our conversation with Mike and Rob!
Literary Joe: So I'm curious. Do you guys look to any other animations for inspiration for The Stockholms?
Mike Salcedo: I know for me there were two things I looked at really closely as far as the short-form storytelling, which was a cartoon I think Rob showed me years and years ago. The House of Cosbys by Justin Roiland, that's just like a weird scenario show, three-minute episodes just about.
And the other show was Zombie College, which came out back in 2000, written by Eric Kaplan of The Simpsons and directed by John Rice, who is also from The Simpsons. And yeah, it was just a couple of shows that had really weird concepts, and they had to rock through their stories through about ten three-minute episodes and create arcs between episodes, there's continuity.
And so I wanted to get as much continuity as I could with such a short framework. Cause there's not really any time to establish something in a single episode.
Rob DenBleyker: Yeah. I think that's an upside too cause speaking personally, if I'm watching something on YouTube, I think I'm more likely to watch a three-minute video than a 10-minute video. I think it almost works in our favor to have these little tiny bite-sized episodes that are just super dense with jokes, but they're very like in and out of the story.
Mike Salcedo: Yeah, no, I'll watch a two or three-minute thing three times before I watch a nine-minute thing.
Literary Joe: Can you tell me a little bit about Explosm itself?
Rob DenBleyker: Yeah, sure. Explosm was the business we started when we realized that Cyanide and Happiness was becoming more than just a hobby back in 2008, 2009. So we started a business to encapsulate everything we were working on and not just Cyanide and Happiness.
So since then, it's become a lot of things. It's an animation studio that produces a short every week on YouTube, and we also do daily comics. We've produced a couple of card games, and now we're working on a video game. So it's this kind of umbrella organization that we've built that we operate in Dallas.
Literary Joe: Nice, and I read a little bit about the Cyanide and Happiness video game that's coming out. Can you tell us anything about that?
Rob DenBleyker: Yeah. It's coming out towards the end of Summer. We don't have an exact date yet, but it's called Freakpocalypse. It's a point and click adventure game set in the Cyanide and Happiness universe.
So you play a high schooler as the main character trying to navigate the apocalypse that's full of Cyanide and Happiness characters, references, and storylines. So it's very much in the same vein as Monkey Island, King's Quest, it's just solving puzzles and enjoying like a single-player story.
Literary Joe: Which consoles is it going to be for?
Rob DenBleyker: Yeah, so far, it's coming out on PC and the Nintendo Switch on day one. Other consoles are still considering it, but nothing is locked down yet.
Literary Joe: Was there anything else about any of your other projects you wanted me to include?
Rob DenBleyker: Yeah. I mean, people should check out our new card game Trial by Trolley, it's a card game version of The Trolley Problem where you have to choose left or right and run somebody over, it's a super fun game, lots of arguing. That's in stores now. It's on Amazon and Target.
And then other than that, yeah, we're still making a cartoon every week. So I would suggest if you haven't watched the Cyanide and Happiness in a while, it's a good time to catch up.
*This interview has been edited for clarity.*
Yong Sun misses his family as his first Christmas in the bank approaches. Even so, the Stockholms are gonna be okay.
New episodes of The Stockholms release once a week, and you can catch up here.