FOLIO
Su Ertekin-Taner
These days everybody has a podcast, so we did some deep diving into the local podcast scene and found these two pearls.
The Short Box: A Comic Book Talk Show
A soft jazz, percussion and brass heavy instrumentation crescendos like a superhero’s theme — fitting, to say the least, with the content that will follow. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you The Short Box Podcast.” The chipper voices of Badr, Cesar, Ed, Ashley and Drew, the podcast presiders/pontificators (whichever alliteration speaks to you more), soon replace this minute-long score. The Short Box, a weekly comic book and pop culture discussion podcast running since 2012, first pulsed green on the “Folio” radar in 2018 when it won Best Podcast in our annual Best of Readers Poll — for the first time. Since then, Folio and Short Box have both expanded their audiences with the Short Box remaining clearly in our line of view.
Cheers to you, Short Box — which, for the non-comic book fanatics, refers to a type of container designed to store comic books — for receiving a Folio Podcast Pearl. A toast to your insightful, informed, flowing, digestible and humorous discussions on new comic books, movie iterations of comics, the industry’s leading creators and the comic industry in general. A toast to entertaining interviews with the comic industry’s professionals and excited amateurs (artists, publishers, actors and content creators) that scratch the average comic fan’s informational itch and offer advice on comic creation and publication. A toast to your expanding fanbase and impressive marketing featuring fashionable merchandise and recurring Patreon plugs, which advertise exclusive, never-before-seen video content. Another toast to nearly 400 hour-long episodes. And a final toast to well-timed, applicable audio interjections that encourage viewers to *insert applause noise* right back at The Short Box team.
If our (imaginary) glasses were filled with champagne, we’d be blind drunk with all these toasts and certainly, we are (metaphorically) drunk on The Short Box podcast’s natural banter and researched discourse. The Short Box welcomes comic lovers and comic discoverers alike!
Learn more about The Short Box on its website (https://www.theshortboxpodcast.com/) or Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/theshortboxjax/) and hear it on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Podcast Addict, SoundCloud, Pandora, Spotify, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, iHeart or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Straight Chilling: A Horror Podcast
“Folio” is straight chilling with the Straight Chilling Podcast. This weekly horror movie review podcast promises killer commentary on your favorite horror flicks from around the world (like “Ringu” and “The Happiness of the Katakuris”) and through the ages (like 1957’s “The Curse of Frankenstein” to films that debuted just weeks before). The podcast team — Rob, Andy, Justin and DJ Elzebub — promise to “kill, slice, dice and chop up” slashers and thrillers alike; in fact, the team has been chopping up conversation about their weekly victim-movies for nine years.
Perhaps the most bloodcurdling, yet strangely satisfying, aspect of the Straight Chilling Podcast is its ability to set the spooky scene. Their introductory and conclusory sound samples chock-full of glass breaking and evil laughter set the tone. The well-segmented, time-stamped and audio-cued sections on housekeeping, recommendations, spoiler warning and full reviews, as well as Cooter of the Week, highlighting the most manipulative character in the movie of the week, and Hotline Scream, featuring listener voicemails, make for an organized, accessible listening experience. Most exciting, especially for syntax lovers like me, is Straight Chilling’s homonym-filled vocabulary with words like “chilling,” meaning the act of relaxing, or the adjectives “horrifying” or “chop up,” meaning, literally, cut up and have a conversation.
Horror movie fans and genre newcomers feast on Straight Chilling’s body of work which always features cinematic discussion on a weekly movie’s plot, themes, score, actor performances and cinematography. The sometimes light-hearted, sometimes heavily analytic discussion will have you rolling in (evil) laughter and wanting to rewatch fan favorite horror films.
Overall, “Folio” loves Straight Chilling; hell, we’d bury a body for them. So, as the Straight Chilling team would say “All you motherf***kers, keep chilling,” and listen to the next fresh (movie) kill.
Find Straight Chilling on their website (https://www.instagram.com/straightchillingpodcast/) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/straightchillingpodcast/) and listen on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Podchaser, Rephonic, Deezer, RadioPublic, Patreon, Stitcher or OwlTail, among other locations.
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