Hello boys!

Notably influential on the leather-clad 'Gay Clone' look of the late 70s/early 80s, the 'Kake' fetish sex comics by Tom of Finland (1920-1991) really had one primary aim: to make gay sex look as ecstatically fun as possible. Filled with hypersexual supermen whose phalluses were surely designed to be the envy of men, dogs and skyscraper architects the world over, the stories lack subtlety (essentially: cruise-score-screw-et voila!) but it can't be denied that these (improbably) big boys look like they're having a hell of a good time. Indeed, the unstinting explicitness has perhaps obscured due appreciation of Tom's masterful pencil drawing and command of human physique – gloriously, gratuitously exaggerated though it is.

Danny Graydon