Jason Corbett #3.

The Toronto Argonaut.

Vert Is Dead takes a look back at the now departed Strength Magazine for the next two weeks. It will be some ads, photos, and editorial content. I'm slightly inclined to believe some of this stuff hasn't wound up on the internet before. I might be wrong on that, but I think some of the companies made different ads from what ran in other skateboard publications for Strength. At any rate, it hasn't been on here on whatever day I post it as yet.

Strength was a magazine based in Cincinnati, Ohio that was around from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s. The publisher was Christian Strike. Matt Deak was the managing editor, Eric Wollam was the art director, and Joel Porczak was the photo editor. The mag was a hodgepodge of skateboarding, snowboarding, hip hop, indie rock, and art. It was the 90s so this honestly made sense to offer such a variety of content in one perfect bound printed form. There was also plenty of hi-jinx, which earned them a comparison to Big Brother. Due to their location, Strength focused a little more on the East Coast and Midwest.

Around about 2001, Strength was bought by CCS. The silly business and snowboarding were taken out and the magazine focused only on skateboarding with much less music coverage than there had been. The layouts were cleaned up and the content was a little more organized. They still did a lot of art features that included interviews with the folks who were designing skateboard graphics. They also relocated to Los Angeles. Strike remained in the publisher position, although Eric Conyers was listed as an associate publisher. Carleton Curtis, Quentin Haskins, and the late Eric Stricker served as editors over the last few years the mad was around. Stricker would go on to be the editor at Transworld. Strength came to an end in early 2003.

The photo is by Geoff Kula.

Strength - Volume 2 Issue 7 June 1997