#Juno Steel and the Lesson Learned

[abessive-art]

Rameses: So I've changed my name 30 years ago, that you've proven. But a name is worth nothing more than a few pretty sounds and you and I both know it.

Juno: Maybe youre right Rameses. I just have a hard time trusting people who cant figure out what they want to call themselves.

[glamiers]

I didn’t know danger would be so, well dangerous

-mick mercuy,the penumbra podcast

[toengageistobuild]

I just started the penumbra podcast (focusing on Juno Steel first), and while it’s not /yet/ my cup of tea, I’ve learned my lesson from Wolf359 to just chill and go with it for a bit. Gotta say, love the poetic descriptions though, and Mick Mercury is. A guy for sure.

so far, it’s been:

“Juno Steel and the Need For Therapy (because his backstory bits are… certaintly something)”

and

Juno, every time they need to discuss Hyperion City: “Hyperion city. An absolutely terrible city to live in. It’s shit. In fact, if you think it had a redeeming quality, it doesn’t. I will not let you forget this fact, ever. Believe me, I live here.”

(I’m on “the day that wouldn’t die,” so like. Four or five episodes into his storyline)

also I hope Rex (Peter?) comes back at some point, if only because Juno’s description of him after he left was genuinely captivating, and I want him to describe the man again

[voids-ideas]

Ah, J. Your eye is back. And it's all kind of crazy colors. It's like a miracle or something

It's not a miracle, Mick. It's a paycheck. New boss has big pockets

Getting paid in eyes. I'll have to look into that

The penumbra podcast. 2.04: Juno Steel and the lesson learned (Part 1)

...

I can't

I'M LAUGHING SO HARD

[earth-64]

My Journey in Understanding Comics - Part 2

--

Part 1 is not required reading. In fact, I will refrain from even linking it here. Every blog post is someone’s first.

--

It shouldn’t be embarrassing to admit that I needed to have “comic books” explained to me. Yet I feel ashamed that I allowed the entire medium to exist within a hair’s breadth of my cultural understanding for so long. I’ve already gone over my select few childhood run-ins with comics, as well as the false-start that nearly was my first paper-comic obsession* (*See “My Journey in Understanding Comics” #1! - Ed.), so my story this time will start in November of 2023. 

I was working a mundane job at a manufacturing facility. Full-time hours of applying stickers to pieces of foam, or punching out holes in paper, or assembling little devices of god-knows-what, praying that for every life-saving defibrillator adhesive pad I quality-checked that the insulation padding I was shape-forming wasn’t destined for a war machine. It was a place of room-sized printing presses, massive machines that shaped and cut materials with the power of water-jets, and dark laboratory backrooms with more nausea-inducing chemicals filling the air than oxygen. While I didn’t end up falling into vats of any of the horrifically powerful bleaches we used to clean the printing screens (although I did retire home early on a number of occasions from dizziness caused by breathing in acetone), it was here that I had way too much time on my hands and binged podcasts. 

I was devouring 10 hours of audio content a day, from audio dramas to history lessons to comedy sketches. The hardest part of the job became satiating my hunger for endless content. After exhausting “Midnight Burger” and Penumbra’s “Juno Steel”, I listened through all of Tim Roger’s “Action Button” reviews in audio-form. On recommendation from my girlfriend, that made a natural transition into gulping down hundreds of episodes of “Insert Credit”. Among other branching paths (I recommend “They Create Worlds” and “Video Game History Hour”), I was led through Alex Jaffe to “52 Pick Up”.

“52 Pick Up”, hosted by Alex Jaffe and Gita Jackson, discusses DC’s 2006-2007 weekly comic book “52” issue by issue. I dipped my toe into it with hardly any context: it had been many years since I read comics, very little of that had been DC. Certainly none from around the time “52” was published, and certainly not any that would provide any helpful context to “52”. I cannonballed into the the deep end, albeit without risk of drowning: if the podcast hosts helped me stick the landing then I would be opened to a whole new world of possibilities, if I was just utterly lost by the interwoven plot threads and greater context of the comic then I would just shrug it off and go back to the comforting familiarity of learning about unreleased Nintendo knitting machines* (* “VGHH” #117! - Frank ( - not Frank)). This isn’t the iTunes review section so I’ll spare you from me simply pasting in the glowing review I left for them, but rest assured that “52 Pick Up” does its job of introducing someone to the context of comic books tremendously well. I was hooked, and have not missed a bi-weekly wednesday since. 

However, it wasn’t enough to break the floodwall I had erected after the comic-related disaster I had beared the full brunt of so many years ago. I followed “52” and kept saying to myself “I think I’ll subscribe to that DC mobile app, and read some of the surrounding context”, but I never pulled the trigger on that purchase. My interest was piqued, I was given the on-ramps, taught all the techniques from a master of comics knowledge, and yet I could not begin the simple act of reading. 

I hold the act of consumption on a higher pedestal than it deserves. I regularly find myself hesitating to consume. Is this the right time? How will this work affect me? “Are you ready?” I ask myself, fighting back my natural instinct to presume anything unknown to me is not “for me”. 

In February of 2024 I finally made a concession: I would start with something I felt I was closer to. Something that wouldn’t be “out of character” for me to consume. I had already been into “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” for some years, so I turned to manga, and read “Dragon Ball”. This isn’t the place for me to put all my thoughts on “Dragon Ball”. Know simply that it was a prime example of works of fiction finding me at exactly the right moment in my life, affecting me tremendously, with Toriyama’s passing happening right in the nearly exact middle of my readthrough. My dad had treated “Dragon Ball” with the same disdain as Wrestling or Football as I was growing up, something that wasn’t “for me”, something dumber, barbaric. 

Comic books were his thing, and manga was not my thing. Before I moved out I had to find ways to justify things as being “my thing”. Webcomics were a natural extension of an interest in video games, manga was an eventual gap bridged by years of anime expos and the absurdity of “Jojo’s”, but “Dragon Ball”, among many other things, remained unreachable. 

Now that I live on my own there are no gaps between works of fiction that need filling. My brain still often tricks me into thinking I cannot leap over the vast chasms that separate genres and mediums, but it is only the residual fear of being perceived as not being myself. There is no longer anyone in my daily life that has known me for a great amount of time, no one to police me to stay true to my platonic self. I have to remind myself that I can choose to wake up and be a whole new person if I so wish. Any day could be the day I decide to start being a person who reads comic books.

In late July 2024 I found the catalyst: a copy of Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art”.  It was a book always on my radar as being something that I would get a kick out of, but I never wanted to just read a scan of it. I knew it deserved to be read physically, but I never had the drive to order a copy. In the end it needed to appear before me, on the shelf of the thrift store I regular, as a spur of the moment purchase. I’ll again spare you from a full overzealous review, but it was exactly what I needed. “This is what a comic book is. This is why it’s important. This is why it’s for everyone.” That’s what I needed to hear. I needed someone to lay it all out, label all the pieces, explain the history, and tell me that comics can be for me. 

In August my friends decided to marathon some of the X-Men movies. All the stars aligned: I had the knowledge, the motivation, the relief from social permission. No, not a relief. A triumph. I had triumphed over a lifetime of social pressure, of expectations and preconceived notions. I didn’t need to hide my mood-swing dips into unfamiliar media. I didn’t need to be ashamed of stepping outside my comfort zone. The version of myself in others’ heads are their own flawed snapshots of pieces of my true self, not a script they write for me to follow and fear. I could be anything I wanted.

I could be someone subscribed to Marvel Unlimited. 

The conclusion to our thrilling three-part epic is up next in our amazing tale of self-reflection and ceaseless inner-discovery awaits! You don’t wanna miss it true believers!

[madzwashere]

My favorite lesson that I’ve ever learned from a podcast was in season two of Juno Steel. The lesson was that PEOPLE are PEOPLE. They will always be people. People are not black and white. They are gray, and sometimes being gray means they do not so great things! Everyone in their life is going to do something fucked up. Hurt a person you care about, lash out, etc. Of course nobody’s going to like, kill someone with a blaster laser, but you get the point.

People are complex. They do things that are deemed wrong in others eyes, but sometimes it’s the only option. We are all just people living and making choices day to day. It’s just the act of others deciding if what you do is wrong or not. At the end of the day though, we are all just trying to get by, sometimes in ways that can harm us. Harm others. We are all complex beings capable of doing good and not so good. (I hope this makes sense…I’m not the best with formulating posts like this.)

[gwenlena]

hello again penumbra listeners you know the drill, time for season 2!!

hello penumbra listeners out of curiosity! which is your favourite (not objectively best, just your personal favourite) season 1 juno steel episode?

im gonna post the other seasons in the reblogs!

[forlornfig]

IM SORRY wHo??

[badluckcharm000]

"In a lot of ways it reminded me of my old wedding gown: it was dusty, smelled like a lot of dreams had probably died in it, and pushed off into a dark corner somewhere in hopes that everyone would just forget the damn thing had ever happened."

y'know i don't think i ever posted this here, sometimes i lose track of where i've posted what

[princegabriel]

Re-listening to Juno Steel and the Lesson Learned after finishing the season:

*running around the apartment shaking my fists at the heavens* “oh FUCK YOu ‘worst enemy’ fuck yOU”

[exhaustedwerewolf]

Tell me that this puzzle comes back to bite Juno and Mick in the ass...

there isn’t enough info to infer Sage as the murderer, it suggest murder is a proffession that somehow mutually excludes others. Why couldn’t Aisha be the murderer and a baker?

[pensivespacepirate]

the proctor and cecil kanagawa would make good friends

[givemeureyes]

nothing brings me more joy in life than juno steel’s “what.”. he never asks it. it’s always so exasperated but also deadpan. i need to hear it once per episode

[jazzyjesse]

Hi yes I would like to adopt this 38 year old disaster of a man

(Click for better quality)

[thepenumbrapodcast]

Tomorrow. Get schooled.

[belanekra]

Juno: While our host gave Mick the rerun of her stupid puzzle, I took this opportunity to investigate my feelings about the last two hours. Stupid, goddamn waste-of-time puzzles, what am I, some kind of ---

Mick: Shhh, Jay, I'm trying to listen.

___________________________________________________________

Seriously though, is Juno monologuing out loud? Like, he steps off to the side to give his monologues while all the other characters just stand around, taping their feet and checking their watches. Or going about their business like there isn't a grumpy PI in the corner giving exposition to nobody.