In 1965, Tom of Finland began flirting with the idea of an ongoing character for his panel stories, the ultimate Tom's Man. He tried out a blond named Vicky-a common male name in Finland-followed by a Tarzan-inspired Jack. Then in 1968 Tom settled on Kake, a dark-haired, mustached leatherman who often wore a tight white T-shirt bearing the motto 'Fucker.'
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We must remember that Tom of Finland was a ground-breaking artist, one of the very first to picture masculine gay men, “robbing straight homophobic culture of. Are you Looking Download or read Tom of Finland: The Complete Kake Comics for free.? Mustaches and muscles: Back to the days when men were men.
Kake lived up to this moniker, a sort of post-Stonewall, hyper-masculine Johnny Appleseed traveling the world on his motorcycle to spread the seeds of liberated, mutually satisfying, ecstatically explicit gay sex. Tom lived out many of his most personal fantasies through Kake, and Kake's international fans made him the template for what came to be known as the gay clone look of the 1970s. Between 1968 and 1986, Tom published 26 episodes of Kake adventures, most as 20-page booklets.Tom of Finland - The Complete Kake Comics collects all of these stories in one volume. Return with Kake to the days when men were men, sex was carefree, and everyone wore a big thick mustache. Dian Hanson produced a variety of men's magazines from 1976 to 2001, including Juggs, Outlaw Biker, and Leg Show, before becoming TASCHEN's Sexy Book Editor. Her titles include the 'body part' series, The Art of Pin-up, Psychedelic Sex, and Ren Hang.
Touko Laaksonen, the boy who would become Tom of Finland (1920-1991), began drawing cartoons at age five. His favorite subjects were the rough manly men of his native Finland, as Touko knew from an early age that men interested him more than women. His talents were further honed by art study in Helsinki. He found success in the Finnish advertising industry but secretly continued creating his increasingly erotic drawings of hyper-masculine men. In 1957 he submitted some drawings to the American magazine Physique Pictorial and the 'Tom of Finland' legend was born. By the late 60s Tom's 'dirty drawings' became the standard for gay art, and Tom's Men a template for a new gay masculinity. Tom's art continues to play an important role in promoting self-confidence, positive self-image and openness in the gay community.
Laaksonen lived from 1920 until 1991, and while he moved comfortably and, if this film is to be believed, delightedly in international gay circles, he was not known as a personality in the mainstream culture. This fiction film, directed by Dome Karukoski and written by Aleksi Bardy (in collaboration with, apparently, five other scenarists/contributors), is a heartfelt tribute to the artist. It’s also a too-often diffuse one.
The movie opens with Pekka Strang, who plays the title character, in rather unconvincing old-age makeup sitting in what looks like a railway station waiting room, having a conversation in English. The framing device is a celebration he is given in America—which was a country where his work could be more openly celebrated than his native land, where homosexuality was a crime until 1971, and its “promotion” was a crime until 1999, several years after Laaksonen’s death. The movie flashes back to World War II, in which Laaksonen was a soldier; a defining event of his time in the army, the movie tells us, was when he stabbed to death a Russian parachutist. Shorter shrift is given to the Nazis, of whom the real-life Laaksonen once observed, “they have the best uniforms.” A different film might have made dramatic hay out of an examination of Laaksonen’s abhorrence of what the Nazis’ stood for versus his admiration for a certain strain of fascist fashion/style, but this is not a movie with a lot on its mind.
Rather, it’s all about personal struggle. “Tom” hides his drawings from his sister, who disapproves of his preferences, referring to them as a “phase.” There’s a bit of drama when a roomer arrives, and a possible romance between him and the sister turns into a lifelong love story for “Tom.” There is not a lot concerning the job Laaksonen had at the Finnish office of McCann Erickson, the advertising giant. The most interesting stuff in the movie is about the artwork—not how Laaksonen made it, the movie is hardly concerned with craft, but rather its initial uses. How Laaksonen first used his postcard size-drawings as invitation cards of a sort, requests to men he found attractive as to whether they were interested in that sort of thing. In a society that makes homosexuality illegal, gays are obliged to speak in code, and that the drawings served as an extension of code—as a crossing of little or no return in certain respects—is fascinating.
When “Tom” starts selling his drawings in America and begins to travel there, the movie takes on an almost magical-realist tone. In the ‘50s and ‘60s “Tom” has to live in shadows, and a trip to Berlin during which authorities discover one of his drawings is a near-catastrophe for him. In Beverly Hills, when a group of cops walks in on a pool party his hosts have arranged for him, Laaksonen fears the worst, but the scene ends with an amusingly ironic twist. Unfortunately, little else in the movie carries that kind of impact. Its lively finale is heartening, given the patience that Laaksonen was obliged to exercise before he could live his life out in the open. But the insights of the movie are too scant for much of a real impression to take hold of the viewer.
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