The Realist was a pioneering magazine of "social-political-religious criticism and satire," intended as a hybrid of a grown-ups version of Mad

Mad (magazine)

Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century.The last...

 and Lyle Stuart

Lyle Stuart

Lyle Stuart was an American author and independent publisher of controversial books....

's anti-censorship monthly The Independent. Edited and published by Paul Krassner

Paul Krassner

Paul Krassner is an author, journalist, stand-up comedian, and the founder, editor and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958...

, and often regarded as a milestone in the American underground

Underground press

The underground press were the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other western nations....

 or countercultural press of the mid-20th century, it was a nationally-distributed newsstand publication as early as 1959.