The Ultimate Gnatrat

Mark Martin’s The Ultimate Gnatrat is a single-issue oddity from Fantagraphics, launched in 1990 as a one-shot that remains a cult curio. Martin’s distinctive, lo-fi cartooning brings a scrappy, irreverent energy to the title, which stands as a brief but memorable footnote in the publisher’s experimental ’90s lineup. It matters as a snapshot of the era’s willingness to give niche, creator-driven visions a platform, even if only for a single issue.