12 Years

"A couple years... It'd be cool to get to five."

That's what I used to tell people when they'd ask me for how long I was planning on making Oh Joy Sex Toy. It surprised me how frequently that question came up in the early years, because the speakers were assuming that the subject matter was inherently limited. There's only so many comics you can do about the various positions and safety precautions and accoutrements before you've kinda covered it, right? How much is there you can say about sex?

Oh Joy Sex Toy turned 12 years old over the weekend.

From the beginning, I already knew that finding subject matter to cover was not going to be an issue. Time was the finite resource. My concern was that I run out of time on this project before I'd covered everything I wanted to include. "Sex" is so much more than a single, specific physical act. To start with, it can be a plethora of physical acts! Some people count some acts as "sex" and not others, while others count them the opposite way! For some people, sex doesn't even have to involve physical touch! Sex is psychological! Sex is emotional! Sex is behavioral! Sex is cultural! Sex is social! Sex is controversial! Sex is political! Sex is commercial! Sex is a legal matter! Sex is a religious matter! Sex is a defining trait for people's identities!

There's so much to say about sex!!!!!!!

You could spend 12 years producing hundreds upon hundreds of pages of comics about sex— both making them yourself and hiring a wide assortment of talented, unique artists to do so as well— and there would still be so many sex-related topics that wouldn't be touched yet. Like I said, the only thing limiting the creation of OJST comics is the time, money, and manpower to produce them, certainly not a lack of topics to pick from.

Matt and I figured we could keep this project afloat for a couple years and then time and finances would naturally push us down a different road, as had been the case with my previous online comic series.

But something very surprising happened.

People showed up.

Readers showed up. Artists showed up. Patrons showed up.

They (you) showed up in such force that Oh Joy Sex Toy became both of our (more than) full-time jobs. This project grew faster and bigger than either of us had dreamed. It blasted through its first anniversary, then fifth, then tenth, and now, here we all are, a dozen years in. It grew far beyond being just Matt's and my project. OJST is a library of comics from diverse cartoonists around the world, sharing their tastes and opinions and experiences and knowledge. It outgrew our ability to maintain it on our own and now depends on our small (but mighty!) team to keep everything functioning behind the scenes each week.

Oh Joy Sex Toy isn't Matt's and my project anymore. It's a community effort now. It's a community producing it and it's a community funding it. OJST is a community.

Thank you so much for being a part of this community.

Thank you for twelve years.

Thank you.

-Erika