As Hugh Hefner once put it, “I gave Harvey Kurtzman an unlimited budget, and he exceeded it.”

Krassner welcomed all viewpoints in “The Realist,” including an interview with George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party. In 1961 Krassner asked the white supremacist how he would handle those who crossed the party. “I believe in the Nazi methods of discipline,” was the ominous reply.

Clowes employs a direct, judiciously detailed drawing style that keeps the ricocheting narrative grounded.

Crumb said that the cartoonist Spain’s politics “were driven by genuine, authentic class anger, class hatred. I liked that about him.”