Let’s do some research on what was happening in the skate mags in the year 98, that I picked up at random. (Note: Big Brother wasn't included because it's Big Brother).
Cover:
Thrasher has Cardiel blasting over paint cans in the rain, pretty hesh!
SLAP:Dan doing an inverted wallride, leaning a bit on the artsy-er side, awesome. Transworld: Kareem doing a crooked grind on a picnic table, stylish as f.
Op-Ed:
Transworld: Skin talking about the Kareem pro-spotlight by Atiba, you know it’s gonna be good.
Slap: Lance tells how his favorite thing about skating is getting hyped and cheer his friends when they are ripping, with instructions how to do it, Hoot-n-Holler, smack the coping as hard as you can, “You can never make too much noise” etc. (Funny enough, SLAP forums are generally negative about this, see: Lower Bobs contest topic etc.).
Thrasher: Angel Dust has Phelps writing about Shao’s passing. “ I loved him. …my friends are gonna be there too…” he ends it.
Regulars:
Trash, Mush and Mandatory information offers the latest industry news. Letter-section are similar, skaters, stupid questions, haters, Muska, moms etc.
Music section:
Transworld: Please kill me-book, V/A Tibetian Freedom Concert CD, V/A Major Force West CD and The Verve. No particular direction here.
SLAP: Anthrax interview, One Man Army interview, Reviews include Swinging Utters, RTCF, Rancid, Slayer, Hatebreed, DMX, Buddha Monk, Massive Breakbeats etc. Definitely on the punk-edge with some rap/hip hop content in this issue.
Thrasher: Sunny Day Real Estate article, Chubbies interview, Notes from the Underground Wez lists bands like Qotsa, The Drags, Murder City Devils, AFI, One Man Army, Rancid, and Jen has the latest on Gangstar, Mobb Debb, Guru, Cypress Hill, PE etc.
Articles:
Transworld: Kareems pro-spotlight is great and indepth. Israel Forbes spotlight has some great photos, but the actual interview is ok. Otherwise you got your regular tour articles & contest articles, and local check outs.
SLAP: No big interview in this issue, instead there’s a bunch of smaller ones with the same questions (years skating, how high can you ollie, satan or god, dream session…) with Kanten Russell, Cairo, Hewitt, Schaaf and Puleo. Good lineup of skaters, but the questions are not too interesting. Pancho wrote a THINK tour article, there’s contest stuff etc.
Thrasher: Elissa has an interview AND the full-page spread doing a kickflip bs lipslide at the spot some generation might know as “School2 from THPS2”. Sick! Then there’s Buster Halterman interview, Jake Rupp interview, Tour stuff, up and comers, Gonz story, The Butcher check out. (Thrasher actually has the most things to read despite TWS having most pages).
Photos:
There’s great and terrible photos in all three, depending on who was holding the camera. If you wanted to rip some photos to put on your wall from the mag… I’d say the Kareem photos in Transworld are the best out of these (Atiba).Slap has good ones, Thrasher too, but the 90’s layout kinda hurts some of them.
Writing: Again, it really is about who wrote the thing, all three have great articles and boring ones. Transworld is definitely more "professional" where as both Slap and Thrasher are more raw. All 3 have things that haven't aged very well though.
Ads:
All three same pretty much the same ads (this was before Transworld got needy and started to give ads for US Army and shit). For why Transworld has the most pages, their ad-department was 3-4 times bigger than Slap or Transworld. But both Thrasher and Slap started getting bigger in the late 90’s early 00’s and it’s mostly thanks to things like THPS bringing a lot more audience AND advertisers.
Honestly, all three are worth flipping through and in the time where you couldn't just scroll on your phone through endless skate content, invaluable. Of course people have their own perceptions on what was cool and what was not (I was a Thrasher kid and Transworld was whatever), but as I get older I can find more and more cool shit in these and something you can't replicate on the interweb.