A few months ago, I attended the final XOXO conference in Portland, Oregon.

XOXO is (was) an IRL gathering of “the good internet” — bloggers, hackers, artists, journalists, makers, all coming together to bounce off each other for a few days to see what happens.

Each annual installment was a place of learning, of inspiration, of friendly collegiality and of bonding over shared interests (and shared distress, sometimes — after all, the subject at hand is the internet, and what it does to people).

This year, XOXO returned for the first time since before the pandemic. It was billed as “Once more, with feelings.”

One of the themes that emerged from the talks, presentations, and conversations was the state of community on today’s internet.

Lots of people at XOXO, myself included, have spent the last few years reeling from the hyper-fragmentation and accelerating commodification of online spaces.

For example: Twitter used to be a place where I could reliably converse with and broadcast to a lot of like-minded people. Now, personally, I’m done with Twitter. I’ll never post there again.

That space has become toxic, and not merely toxic, but useless to me with respect to what I want out of a social network (conversation; reach; entertainment).

Bluesky…Threads…Mastodon…Private Discords and niche subreddits…Substack newsletters and Facebook groups just one spam DM away from being hacked…Everyone I know who works online has had to face the question, lately, of what is going to work now.

For now, I’ve personally shifted my focus to Bluesky – here is my personal profile, and here is one for Wondermark comics. I hope to see you there!

As for the video linked above…

All the XOXO speakers were great, and you can watch all their talks on YouTube (from this year and years past).

But I’ve chosen to highlight Cabel Sasser’s talk in this post for a few reasons:

• It’s very entertaining. The entire audience was on the edge of our seats the whole time.
  
• It’s on a topic I care deeply about: remembering, and cherishing, artwork from the past that can speak to us in the present in a new way.
  
• It’s about taking time to save, and bring along with us, things we love that might otherwise be lost as we move from place to place, platform to platform, website to website.

Watch the whole talk, and then, visit the website Cabel set up in its aftermath. (No spoilers from me.)

[ Cabel Sasser describes how he discovered a forgotten artist – XOXO 2024 ]

This storyline began with Part 1.

Continued from Part 1

They are at the factory now — I should be receiving my stock in the month of August sometime.

Here are the final designs. Pre-orders are still open!

This project has been really fun! I enjoyed the challenge of designing a bunch of new stuff (which I haven’t done in a while), and it’s been really interesting seeing which designs have hit and which are are little less popular.

I can already tell that a few of these are going to be one print run only. So, this is your best chance to grab anything you like while they are all guaranteed to be available.

I’ve also made available sticker and T-shirt versions of all these same designs! Likewise, they are all available now, although some of them may not be available after this campaign (or anyway, I’m unlikely to reprint them after I sell through the first print run).

The shirt versions of these designs will be made to order, so basically any color is available, not just black!

But for simplicity’s sake, here are all the designs on black:

I am also taking this opportunity to reissue some of my older shirt designs as one-offs… So there are a total of 20 (!) shirt designs available.

Finally…I am also offering my books, games, and other miscellaneous things too (like greeting cards). This is a great opportunity to pick up some things at a discounted shipping rate!

And many of these items will migrate to my online store later on, but likely not all of them, so if you see something here you like, please don’t hesitate!

A hearty thank-you to everyone who has already placed an order!! Rest assured I am using your money to manufacture these actual things, and then shortly, I will be mailing them to you.

[ LINK TO PINTOPIA STORE ]

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I posted it on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

RELATED: There is a Wondermark Instagram. I set it up ages ago but have never committed to doing anything with it. Someday, I will post more things to it! Feel free to follow it now in case I do!

The most active community I post comics to these days has actually become Wondermark on Facebook?

In the macro, I dislike that website with a passion, but in the micro, I can’t argue with the results for my page in particular.

Lots of great people reading and commenting over there! If you are one of them…thanks!!

This Saturday, May 18, starting at 10AM Pacific time, I’ll be doing a live “Ask Me Anything” on /r/comics.

I’ve been informed that the mods will make the actual post a few hours earlier, for questions to start rolling in. UPDATE: Here is the link to the thread!

I will of course (as is tradition) award a prize to the best question asked during the AMA.

I’ve done a few AMAs before, and topics previously discussed include:

In 2018:

• Sick elephants!
• Exclamation marks!
• Sea lions!

In 2013:

• The Machine of Death books and card game!
• Tweet Me Harder, the podcast I did with Kris Straub that (at that point) had only recently concluded!
• The art and state of webcomics!

Super interesting to see how things have changed and evolved since I gave those answers. Most of them still ring true, but a few have the lingering taste of “the way things were a while ago” on them now.

Anyway, please tune in this weekend to ask new questions and read new answers!!