Tom of Finland's 'Thieving Cowboy'

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 01

 The villain of the piece spies on his target.

He is a young man dressed in very tight jeans and a leather jacket,

a garment that shows off his dinky bubble butt to perfection.  

He's not obviously a cowboy though, despite the implication of the title.

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 02

Seeing there is no-one around, he ventures into the tack room and lifts down a saddle.

He doesn't have the face of a villain, maybe he only wants to sniff it. 

A passing cowboy spots what he is doing and stops to investigate.

But it looks as though it's those juicy buns that have really caught his eye.

We can only imagine his reaction when he sees the impressive shaping at the front,

looming large and unprotected as the young man leans across the box.

The glimpse of  his 'belly button' under the jacket is a delicious detail.

In this sensitively copied image you can see the glorious sensuality of Tom's shading 

which has been largely washed away by the 'enhancement' of image 1. 

(see introductory article )

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 03

He is challenged by a muscular, bare topped cowboy,

You can almost hear the poor lad stammering as he tries to explain himself.

With the passage of time, the striped trousers Tom has given the cowboy to wear have become an incongruity that's hard to swallow. I don't think the fashion was that popular even in the 50's, not in the UK anyway. Now they look as though they belong in a circus rather than a ranch. By contrast the young man's classic jacket and jeans have hardly aged at all although young men don't wear them as tight as this any more (worse luck!).

 

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 05

It's not obvious here whether the cowboy has tried to apprehend the intruder

 or grabbed his jacket or attempted something even more scary for the young man.

It turns out he's not the pussy he looked, having grown into real beefcake all of a sudden.

He sends his attacker reeling away. I'm not quite sure how he's done it though. 

A slap? A head butt? (or BO perhaps?) 

The collapsing cowboy seems to present his crotch bulge to his dangling hand.

But a second cowboy interrupts them at this dramatic, suggestive moment.

I've left a gap in my numbering before this picture

 to allow for the existence of a more explanatory intermediate image 

(see introductory article re: numbering)

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 06

The intervention of cowboy No.2 turns the tables. He puts the hunky intruder into an arm lock, making him bend over, seemingly perched on his thigh. Coincidentally, a degree of lumpiness has resurfaced in those tight jeans. This is one of Tom's great physical domination images, easily ranking alongside the careless motorcyclist and coffee-spilling sailor classics. 

Cowboy No 1 lies dazed on the floor displaying considerable assets of his own in an indecorous, open legged pose. It's similar to another seen here recently in the Colourised Royale Guardsmen post. 

I salvaged this fragment from an old Royale Studio ad with some fairly crude editing but it gives a good idea of the original picture. The struggling pair in the foreground are the essence of the composition, one of the better images in this set. I've also attached an AI-enhanced version that goes to the other extreme but shows what might have been.

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 07 

Somehow the captive wriggles free and lunges at his attacker knocking him over. 

He also appears to be taking the chance to grope his opponent's bottom.

In doing so he presents his own backside to the other cowboy 

who returns to the fight with hand outstretched towards the alluring sight.

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 08

Cowboy No 2 goes down and the intruder leaps on top of him, fist flailing.

The two men's groins are pressed together but Tom steers clear of the provocative, homoerotic nuzzling of his slightly later, leather lovers (shown below). The slight crotch displacement he uses instead fortuitously produces hint of top and bottom in the alignment. The arched body of the man underneath enhances the impression both of fierce resistance and sexual pleasure.

No 2 seems to be having another go at removing the visitor's leather jacket.

I recovered this image from the same ad as No 6 above and it suffers from the same shortcomings in quality, but there's no mistaking the impressive sense of desperate struggle Tom has managed to capture. He used a similar fight composition in other stories of the this period.

Tom Of Finland - Leather Lovers (1963)

Tom's image of two leather men sensuously nuzzling dicks is a classic.

Their affectionate embrace is a bold assertion of the true nature of gay sexuality.

It has deservedly become a much-loved expression of Gay Pride.

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 09

The two cowboys eventually get the upper hand.

They begin to  mete out punishment to the impertinent intruder.

No 2 ties a rope to his ankle to quell his resistance 

while No 1 distracts him with  an open hand spank.

The sequencing of the fight images 5-9 is not completely obvious and there's a temptation to place this image 9 adjacent to No 7 but the initiation of the roping sequence anchors it at the end. The cowboy's hat plays a merry dance of it's own throughout these pictures and is no guide to continuity.

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 10

The young man's ankle is tied to a convenient post. The opposing pull of the rope and his restrainer's gagging action produces a flash of curvaceous buttock, a delicious arching of his torso and a look of utter display as he sees his chance of escaping from these men going up in smoke. 

It looks like his jacket is finally coming off.

   

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 12

A few minutes later his other ankle is also tied, spread-eagling his feet wide.

One of his wrists has also been tethered and is being pulled out taut.

His jacket is gently eased off his last untethered limb.

A hand clasps his pec and his arousal shows no sign of abating.

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 13

For me this is a most exciting moment.

Having secured their captive in an uncomfortable X-stretch,

one of the cowboys starts to extract his belt from the loops in his jeans

The other starts to undo the flies of his jeans.

The captive recoils, but his his indrawn abs are a futile act 

that only adds another sexy detail to the alluring display of his body

He can only watch what they are doing and wonder where it will go. 

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 14

With the captive now stretched out helpless, 

cowboy No 1 begins to spank him with his own belt.

His colleague watches the captive's response to the punishment with a faint smile

his jeans are showing signs of strain just below his own belt.

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 15

With the spanking in full flow, the recipient bows his head.

Tom brings out the dense muscularity of the spanker's back

which serves to underline the intensity of the punishment.

The on-looker extends his forefinger as though furtively pleasuring himself. 

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 16

Finally they release the captive and he sinks to the ground massaging his bottom.

The spectator seems to be showing his approval at the performance,

or is that upraised thumb symbolic of something else?

Notice how their feet are entwined.

Tom of Finland - The Thieving Cowboy 17

No 17 is another nicely drawn, sexy picture which benefits enormously from not having been 'enhanced'.

The thief flees, holding up his jeans but minus his expensive leather jacket.

The blond cowboy could be shouting that he's forgotten his jacket,

but both of them have seemed to be trying to get it off him throughout.

So at this point you might wonder who exactly is the thief ?

You can see that in this picture the offender's ass is completely uncovered. Although we saw the top of his jeans being undone in picture 13, they seemed to remain firmly in place in the images that followed. However the drawing of the waistband in 16 looks as if it may have been an afterthought, a sanitisation of nude buttocks (although this might be a misleading effect of the imperfect picture quality). His X-spread restraint would have prevented complete removal of his jeans anyway, but could it be that between pictures 15 and 17 he was spanked on his bare butt?  

Of course that rueful massage of his buttock could be the aftermath of a more invasive come-uppance. We know from the early biker set discovered in 2015 that Tom was drawing sexually explicit endings to some of his series at least and there are hints throughout this piece that the cowboy's interest in him has a sexual dimension (naturally!). Whatever happened to him was sufficient at any rate to persuade him to abandon his coat and would potentially furnish enough additional material to boost the number of images in the set towards Anderson's claimed total of 26. (See Introductory article)

More Tom of Finland articles at mitchmen

More about Tom at Tom of Finland Foundation