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Tom of Finland: An Appreciation

By Will Dubois

Have you ever read a story where the author was pecking out his sentences with one hand as the other stroked his engorged member to -- whoops! -- climax? Well, you are now, or were. Give me a moment to clean off the hot goop from my sticky keyboard.

There. Now, of course, other writers may have jerked it while composing an erotic tale or maybe even just to ease the stress of an impending deadline, but few would admit it. I have no choice, for I am sitting in my office, which is covered with large illustrations of buff naked men twisting each other into sweet donuts where every hole is exposed for the filling. My office is a temple devoted to the worship of the greatest illustrator of our time, Tom of Finland.

Tom of Finland was born Touko Laaksonen in the Finnish village of Kaarina, but the young boy with a penchant for drawing and a fetish for tough men in big leather boots, thanks to a young adulthood of Nazi occupation, will always be known for his penname. Some criticize Tom's admiration for Nazis, but not me. Who wouldn't fall for those leather-bound, black-clad, sleek-car-driving fascists? They're hotter than a goosestep in my anus.

But Tom was not a political man. If you had a penis you could join his party, and what a party it was. I remember first discovering the premiere issue of Kake in 1968, which would become an ongoing series of super-sexual situations. It was like my cock had been hibernating until I opened the first page to an illustration of a Marlon Brando-looking leather-boy (that is if Brando bulked up in a different way) peeking in on a muscular stud changing his socks in such a fashion that his asshole puckered up as if to blow a kiss. I nearly came all over my tie-dyed, hip-hugger bellbottoms.

That erotic discovery is revisited in a beautifully designed box collecting the comic works of Tom of Finland. Tom of Finland: The Comic Collection (Taschen) is a pocket-sized, five-volume set that collects the best of his panel art, which may have earned him a living and a reputation, but obviously was made almost exclusively to arouse the author. The fact that it pops a boner in the pants of the reader is just semen icing the cake. There's enough hot gay sex here to satisfy the horniest queer, and it may even win a few fence sitters over to our side. Butt-fuck hooray!

Now, I'm not saying every man is gay, but most have repressed a more masculine-loving side that usually only needs the key of hard cock in the lock of their mouth to open up a new world of earthly delights. If anything can open that door of perversion, it's Tom and a fine example is of one of his earliest published works, The Happy Harlot.

This masterful and masturbating story, from 1967, tells of two young men, one mustached in a mod stripped suit, the other wearing a military cap, leather jacket and turtleneck, both sporting huge erections barely contained by their tight pants. Our man in the suit is pulling up the hem of a seemingly transparent dress worn by a big-breasted blonde in a black fur coat. Soon our lady fair is toasting the two horn dogs with her pussy, which they both finger enthusiastically.

Our mustached manly man gets his hard-on handled by the blonde, who starts licking it like a lollipop. And what a sucker it is. Tom depicts his dicks with ultra-realism, rendering them so three-dimensional I dare anyone not to try and pick one off the page for a squeeze.

Soon both foot-longs are hot-dogging it around the naked blonde, double-penetrating the willing slut for a tasty man-wich. This would be the ultimate threesome if it weren't for the addition of a woman, which frankly makes it a bit gruesome for me.

That's when Tom, ever the sexual-envelope stretcher, turns tables on the bi-curious couple. The mustached man is ramming his flesh-hammer home, nailing the blonde in the most conservative missionary position, while the other man is dangling his meat by the woman's open mouth. She has a taste, but then shoves his package into the mustached lover's open gob, and he takes that big surprise right down to the hairy root.

OK, Tom was just feeling out his audience at this early juncture in his career, so our boys come all over the blondes face and tits, though one helps the other pump her pussy by pushing his ass deep into that womanly slop. I like to imagine the buxom blonde as a post-op, but either way she and her soft ilk are rarely seen again over the five volumes of Tom of Finland: The Comic Collection.

Volume two introduces a new comic series called Beach Boys, and while these bikini-briefed boys are not from California, everyone's creaming. Glory holes and public group sex is the fun under the summer sun here. The '70s, which was less the Me Decade than the Meat Decade for Tom, are in full blossom by volume three. This book sees Tom on a jungle romp, where savages bound and rape a great white hunter, much to his pleasure, of course.

By volume four military and construction workers join the fray for a Village People's peep show of kinky scenarios. And the final, fifth volume takes us into the Go-Go '80s. The corporate boardrooms are full of acquisitions and mergers, though not in the traditional sense of the word, if you know what I mean. (If you don't, come up and see me some time and I'll show you a gooey time.)

"I work very hard to make sure that the men I draw having sex are proud men having happy sex," says the artist as a hung man. Just take a look at his most popular recurring character, Kake, with his tight T-shirt embroidered with "Fucker" over his chest and a knowing smile beneath his bushy mustache, he just makes me want to come all over his face. And I think it's time I do so again right now!