Tom of Finland
autor
The Little Book of Tom. Cops & Robbers
Tom's taste for police officers and felons-and for sexual tension between the two-developed late in his career. "I've never been to prison," he told a class at the California Institute of the Arts in 1985, "but I hear it's a closed world where there are different roles and people behave different from when they walk free. It fascinates me. It is another subject I come back to again and again." By which he meant fantasized about again and again, since only those subjects that aroused him sexually made it into his art.
The uniforms of the California Highway Patrol motorcyclists were his favorite: tan and tight, with high boots and soft black leather gauntlet gloves. He created his own uniform variants as well, a cross between military and civilian police gear, and invented suitably butch criminals for his cops to apprehend, though once apprehended the power struggle could go either way. Tom was determined to show top and bottom as equally masculine roles, and his cops were as likely to end up happily speared by criminal cock as delivering corrective coitus. Though criticized by some for what appeared to be a glorification of power, Tom was always quick to remind that the world he created was a fantasy world, where anything was possible, and everything was consensual-even in prison.
The Little Book of Tom: Cops & Robbers explores Tom's fascination with criminal justice through a mixture of multi-panel comics and single-panel drawings and paintings, all in a compact and affordable 192 pages. Historic film stills and posters, personal photos of Tom, sketches, and Tom's own reference photos make this far more than another Tom's Comics re-tread.
The Little Book of Tom. Blue Collar
As a boy, Tom's first crush was a strapping young farmhand who worked the fields around his family home. Finland is a land of tough physical men, catching fish in the icy sea; cutting logs in the endless forests; threshing oats, rye, and barley on the farms. Tom, a more sensitive boy, admired these rough men and their distinctive clothing, designed for protection and utility. He later said, "When I was young, leather was worn by people who worked outside because it was warm. All the men who wore leather, they were the type of men which I adored."
When he began to draw he celebrated these early idols, improving their wardrobes with tight jeans, faded T-shirts, and thigh-high beak-toed Lappish boots. It was a young logger in this gear who appeared on the spring 1957 cover of Physique Pictorial, introducing Tom to the world. In the decades to follow Tom added truckers, repairmen, construction workers, circus roustabouts, and the American cowboy to his roster of working-class heroes. Though just sexual fantasies for him, his portrayal of blue-collar lovers helped working class gays accept their true selves.
The Little Book of Tom: Blue Collar traces Tom's fascination with working men in one compact and affordable package. A brawny lineup of multi-panel comics and single-panel drawings and paintings is set alongside archival and contextual material, including historic film stills and posters, personal photos of Tom, sketches, and Tom's own reference photos.
The Little Book of Tom. Military Men
When we think Tom of Finland we first picture muscular, macho young men in military gear. Tom's vision of masculine perfection was formed during his service as an officer during World War II. Though he served in the Finnish air force, it was the German troops, stationed in Finland to help the country repel invading Russian forces, which served as inspiration. After all, only the Germans had uniforms created by Hugo Boss, tightly tailored, replete with designer touches, and complimented by high, shiny black leather boots. Tom, at 19, was smitten, an obsession that deepened following his first sexual experiences with German officers in the blackout streets of Helsinki.
Tom began putting his military fantasies on paper in 1945 to memorialize his thrilling nighttime encounters when the war ended. At first the Hugo Boss uniforms dominated, but as the years and then decades passed he included American naval uniforms as well, and then his own hybridized designs of black leather, jodhpurs, boots, and peaked caps, with military insignia replaced by Tom's Men patches. As Tom attracted an army of loyal fans, he created, with pencil, pen and gouache, an army of free, proud, masculine fantasy men committed to pleasure and male camaraderie.
The Little Book of Tom: Military Men explores Tom's fascination with militaria through a mixture of multi-panel comics and single-panel drawings and paintings, all in a compact and affordable 192 pages. Historic film stills and posters, personal photos of Tom, sketches, and Tom's own reference images explore the cultural context and private inspirations behind the ultimate Tom of Finland hero.
The Little Book of Tom. Bikers
In 1953 Marlon Brando donned a black leather Perfecto motorcycle jacket, military cap, denim jeans, and engineer boots to portray Johnny, sneering leader of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, in The Wild One. In 1954 Tom of Finland abandoned brown leather in his artwork to create his own wild ones: muscular, hyper-masculine, black leather-clad rebels with powerful engines between their legs. The look was adopted by the Satyrs Motorcycle Club, the first gay outlaw club, that same year, making Tom's fantasy world reality. Of course, being Tom, he soon customized his new gay icons, adding leather jodhpurs, knee high boots and leather caps, and every motorcycle bore the brand name "Tom" on the gas tank.
Tom's bikers first appeared as two "Motorcycle Boys" in Physique Pictorial, Winter 1958. Another made the cover of the April 1960 issue. Bikers dominated his PP content from then on, as a nod to its American readership as much as his growing obsession. When he sought an ongoing character, a personal avatar, in 1968, he created Kake as the ultimate biker leatherman, and elaborated on his riding adventures - of every kind - through 26-panel stories. Tom adopted Kake's gear as his own, presenting in black leather jacket, white t-shirt, jeans, and high boots to the end of his life.
The Little Book of Tom: Bikers includes Tom's earliest images for Physique Pictorial, Kake in motorcycle gear, biker panel stories, and sizzling single drawings, all packed into 192 pages of sexy, masculine men enjoying other masculine men in black leather, blue jeans, and high black boots. On bikes.
