Instagram photo by Cthulu • Jul 24, 2016 at 3:55pm UTC

Today on Mistigram: this hirez sketch by Tincat, formerly Jughead, landed in our July 1997 artpack with a hearty helping of sass and urban attitude. The relationship of this crew of primarily white suburban young men to “street” style was never less than a little problematic, but (as with artscene typography’s obsession with graffiti styles) it was the fashion of the era and for the first time, Mist was embracing the zeitgeist rather than shunning and rejecting it, because after three years of ups and downs, it allowed us to re-cast ourselves as a bunch of happening hepcats rather than spotty losers (as Tincat also portrayed us in the very same artpack!) I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a bit of a morale boost.

The helpful transition from Mistigris to Mistfunk (even today, a useful workaround for namespace conflicts here and on Twitter and Instagram) was deeper than a mere rebranding – in addition to a fresh, post-World Tour identity, it went as far as yielding several pieces of internal jargon (such as “chunk” for awesome and “flog” for its opposite.) The move to Mistfunk probably would have been very useful if we’d followed Tribe!’s early lead and gone down that path in 1995, but by 1997, the whole artscene had so little gas left in the tank that we were but one high school graduation away from a stark crossroads.

Instagram photo by Cthulu • Jul 24, 2016 at 3:55pm UTC