Tom’s Men

Tom’s Men by Julian Crowe first appeared in issue Issue 92 in 2021.

Creator's Notes

The goal of this illustration was to take a piece by Tom of Finland and make the men trans. I wanted to challenge the stereotypical image of trans men that people get from porn- pussyboy bottoms (not that there’s anything wrong with being a bottom or using that term for yourself but the fact that trans men are typecast as this is extremely disheartening). Trans men are rarely depicted with bottom surgery as well, so the left and center characters have two different types of srs. The center character is Kake, Tom’s main recurring character. He has thigh scars from alt phalloplasty, which was very important for me to depict on a man who’s the archetypal hypermasculine queer male. Phallo scars used to scare me, and it’s not helped by the abundant fear-mongering within and outside the community, so seeing them on such an icon was empowering. The left character has metoidioplasty; my bf has told me how he felt meta was lesser, and in general, how men with smaller penises are treated as shit, it all makes me very angry so I was happy to draw an attractive male figure with a sexy small cock. Though all 3 men have hyperdicks due to the style of Tom’s, which I wanted to learn from. The man on the right is wearing a packer or 3-in-1 prosthetic, whichever you prefer to imagine. He also has keyhole scars instead of the more common DI scars.

One last note- the 3D line effect I added is the trans flag colors, I prefer subtle you-have-to-be-in-the-know or looking-for-it pride, so I added that extra bit. Plus I like playing with fun effects on my art.