Kake (/ˈkɑːkɛ/ KAH-keh; Finnish pronunciation: [ˈkɑke]) is a fictional character created by Tom of Finland, the pseudonym of Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen. A gay leatherman distinguished by his hypermasculine physical characteristics and his frequent sexual encounters, Kake appears as the title character of a 26-issue erotic comic book series published by Laaksonen from 1968 to 1986.

Though Laaksonen drew artwork featuring leathermen as early as the 1950s, the ongoing Kake comic was originally commissioned by the Danish pornography publishing house DFT in the late 1960s. It was Laaksonen's first comic to be sold as individual comic books; his previous comics in the magazine Physique Pictorial were published as partial excerpts, with the full work sold separately by mail order as a set of five to fifteen printed panels. The publication of Kake transferred to Revolt Press in 1971, and to the Tom of Finland Company in 1982.

Laaksonen's illustrations of leathermen, as exemplified by Kake, significantly influenced the aesthetics of the gay leather subculture. Kake is among Laaksonen's most popular creations, having been alternately described as his "most iconic character" and as "the gay world's most familiar pin-up icon".

Kake is a highly sexualized, highly idealized character distinguished by his hypermasculine physical characteristics, chiefly his developed muscles and exceptionally large penis. In most stories Kake is portrayed as a mustachioed leatherman, wearing clothing that is typically associated with the aesthetics of biker culture: a leather jacket, leather breeches, knee-high leather riding boots, and a leather peaked cap. The character occasionally also appears in other commonly fetishized uniforms, such as those of a policeman or a mechanic.

The defining traits of Kake's character are his friendly and easygoing personality, and his promiscuity. The character's affable disposition intentionally contrasts typical portrayals of leathermen in heterosexual culture as menacing or dangerous, while his frequent sexual encounters reflect the attitudes of the sexual liberation movement that emerged in the 1960s. Writer F. Valentine Hooven III notes that when the series focuses on subjects such as BDSM or rape fetishism, any sadistic acts performed by Kake are rendered as "innocent fun," and that the characters Kake performs these acts on are "welcome to do the same to him."

A typical issue of Kake focuses on the character as he encounters and has sex with a similarly muscular and well-endowed man or group of men. These men are often archetypal characters that embody traditional masculine roles, such as police officers, sailors, lumberjacks, businessmen, or cowboys; the setting, such as a public restroom or a park, also plays a role in the content of the story. Stories are typically composed of approximately twenty full-page panels, and are told mostly without dialogue. When dialogue is included, such as an occasional exclamatory line or as incidental writing (signs, graffiti, etc.), it is written in English.

Laaksonen began drawing multi-panel stories in 1946 as personal projects and as gifts for friends, and drew artwork featuring leathermen as early as the 1950s. He did not submit his comics for publication until the 1960s; his first published comic The Tattooed Sailor was published in the August 1961 issue of Physique Pictorial, a magazine that was the first outlet to publish his illustrations in 1957. Laaksonen's early published illustrations and comics were typically suggestively homoerotic rather than explicitly pornographic, though as censorship laws began to relax towards the end of the 1960s, he began to depict more overtly sexual material in his work. These early comics were one-shots (single stand-alone stories), but by 1965 Laaksonen had begun to experiment with recurring characters: first a character named Mike and later a Tarzan-inspired character named Jack.

Kake was commissioned by Michael Holm, who oversaw gay pornography publishing at the Danish pornography publishing house DFT, and who had approached Laaksonen about publishing an ongoing comic series with the company in the late 1960s. Interior pages for the series were drawn as black line art drawings while covers were drawn as detailed pencil illustrations, a format chosen so as to be easily reproducible at a low cost. Laaksonen often drew using photo-referencing, and frequently used photographs he shot himself of friends or amateur models wearing uniforms or demonstrating poses. The physical appearance of Kake is based on one of Laaksonen's regular photo reference models, a man from northern Finland named Eero he met while visiting Stockholm. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Eero regularly visited Laaksonen in Helsinki to pose as reference for the character. The name "Kake" is a Finnish nickname that has the macho connotations of the English nickname "Butch"; it was also the name of one of Laaksonen's friends.