Thursday, July 31, 2008

The Realist

The Realist was a satirical magazine published by Paul Krassner starting in 1958.
It became an important part of the underground press of the time, and of the counterculture movement in general.
Krassner was a close friend of Lenny Bruce, a member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, and a founding member of the Yippies.
In 1985 a collection of articles and artwork was published as "The Best of the Realist: The 60's Most Outrageously Irreverent Magazine".
In 1986, when I was 12 years old and obsessed with anything related to the 1960's, I found a copy of this book at my local library.
I still have hazy memories of some of those articles and it was one of the things that helped to shape my sense of humor and political outlook.

Here are some covers:






Ethan Persoff is a comic book artist from Austin Texas who is creating a Realist Archive on his website.
He has a ton of other crazy stuff on his site too, mostly obscure comics and ephemera.
Things like "21 paper-based condom wrappers from the 1930's" which must be seen to be believed.

Here's one for the road from the Realist Archive.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Sedatex" doesn't sound like the kind of thing you want wrapped around the old cucumber...