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Concerned
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Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman is a webcomic created by Christopher C. Livingston, parodying the first-person shooter video game Half-Life 2. The comic consists of game screenshots, with characters posed using Garry's Mod, a tool which facilitates manipulation of the Source engine used by Half-Life 2. The first issue was launched on May 1, 2005. The comic completed its run on November 6, 2006 with a total of 205 issues.
While Half-Life 2 takes the player through a dystopian future as protagonist Gordon Freeman, Concerned follows a similar path through the eyes of Gordon Frohman, a hapless, lethally clumsy oaf who arrives in the setting of the game a few weeks before Freeman.
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Encyclopedia
Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman is a webcomic created by Christopher C. Livingston, parodying the first-person shooter video game Half-Life 2. The comic consists of game screenshots, with characters posed using Garry's Mod, a tool which facilitates manipulation of the Source engine used by Half-Life 2. The first issue was launched on May 1, 2005. The comic completed its run on November 6, 2006 with a total of 205 issues.
While Half-Life 2 takes the player through a dystopian future as protagonist Gordon Freeman, Concerned follows a similar path through the eyes of Gordon Frohman, a hapless, lethally clumsy oaf who arrives in the setting of the game a few weeks before Freeman. The comic's dark humor is derived from its contrasts with the game, and its references to various shortcomings of the game. On several occasions in the comic, Frohman becomes the cause of various disastrous circumstances that Freeman will later encounter.
Concerned has been well received by critics and fans alike. Several reviews praised the attention to writing and presentation, as well as the comic's humor. Livingston has also reported uniformly positive relations with personnel at Valve, the developer company of Half-Life 2, who were pleased to have a comic based on their game.
Background
As stated in an interview, Christopher Livingston started working on Concerned as a hobby. In the same interview he stated that he chose the Half-Life 2 game world as the scene for his comic because he was a fan, after also taking the original 1987 Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System into consideration. Livingston always "envisioned [the comic] as something that would have a clear beginning and ending, and run along the same lines as the game", intending to end the plot of the comic at the same point where the game ended.
The creator of Concerned also said he thought of a comic as the best way of introducing humor to the game, that he otherwise described as being "mysterious, moody, [and] immersive".
Synopsis
Introduction
In Half-Life 2, the player takes on the role of Dr. Gordon Freeman. Throughout the game, the player follows the story of a dark, dystopian future in which mankind has been enslaved by the Combine, a mysterious alien enemy. In contrast, Concerned follows the same general path through the story established by Half-Life 2, but instead follows the adventures of Gordon Frohman, a hapless, lethally clumsy oaf who arrives in City 17 a few weeks before Freeman. Frohman is incredibly naïve and, unlike the other citizens, seems to enjoy living under the rule of the totalitarian administrator, Dr. Breen, and the Combine. He holds an insane reverence for the latter, even going to the point of having a plush doll of a Combine soldier.
Plot
The early phases of the comic have Frohman excitedly arriving in City 17. Eventually he takes a job at the Combine's headquarters, the Citadel, under a Combine Elite named Mr. Henderson. As most of his human colleagues become Combine soldiers, he realizes that Henderson has no immediate intention to do the same for him, citing his incompetence. Demanding to become one with the Combine, Frohman willingly sets off to Nova Prospekt, an alien security and detention installation, for invasive surgery to convert him. Meanwhile, he selects Ravenholm as a residence where he can commute to and from City 17, but lacks proper transport with which to get there. After a failed attempt to reach Ravenholm using Dr. Isaac Kleiner's teleporter leaves him stuck in a Counter-Strike: Source server for a week, he seeks Ravenholm by foot instead. Traveling through City 17's canals, Frohman arrives, badly injured and dazed, at Black Mesa East, the headquarters of the human resistance, where he is welcomed as a helper. His stay there is cut short because he causes trouble in the base, and also irritatingly overuses the gravity gun. He is fooled into leaving the base, and finally heads toward and reaches Ravenholm.
On Frohman's arrival, Ravenholm is depicted as a peaceful, bright, and cheerful place devoid of any Combine elements, but "terrorized" by Father Grigori. After adjusting, Gordon becomes accustomed to the town, but unintentionally discloses the town's location to Dr. Breen, who immediately orders his forces to "bomb the shit out of them". The town is fired on with headcrabs, killing many and turning others into zombies. Frohman himself is attacked by a headcrab and turns into a zombie too, yet retains his free will; and after a while his headcrab dies of malnutrition, which is attributed to his lack of intelligence. With Father Grigori's help, Frohman escapes Ravenholm, now the zombie-infested nightmare seen when Freeman visits it in the game, and presses on to Nova Prospekt. After surviving several more hazards, he reaches the coast. Here, after passing the final resistance base and an Antlion-infested beach, Frohman encounters an Antlion Guard, which is killed by a Vortigaunt, an alien race helping the humans in the game. This allows Frohman to retrieve bugbait from the dead creature, with which he can control the Antlions.
Frohman, accompanied by several bugbait-controlled Antlions, eventually reaches Nova Prospekt, only to be turned away as he does not have an appointment. He gives up and returns to City 17 in the following strip, as Gordon Freeman finally arrives in the city, linking the comic's time frame with the start of Half-Life 2. He is then drafted into the resistance after failing to disrupt its operations, and unintentionally signals the start of the resistance's uprising after one of his Antlions accidentally kills a Combine police officer. During the fighting, he accompanies Freeman himself and mingles with resistance members, aids the Combine in the capture of Alyx Vance, one of Freeman's allies, and reunites with Norman Frohman, his long-lost assassin twin brother, only to promptly witness his death at the hands of a Strider, a large tripod war machine.
Following this, Gordon returns to the Citadel, unwillingly aiding Freeman in his journey up the Citadel and influencing the plot of the game. As Freeman is pursuing Dr. Breen to his teleporter, Frohman is about to kill Freeman—but he pauses to come up with the perfect one-liner for the occasion, until Dr. Breen's teleporter explodes. Frohman is flung off the Citadel peak by the explosion. Dr. Breen also survives, having fallen from the Citadel onto a pile of dead Combine soldiers. However, Frohman falls right onto Breen, killing him. Gordon himself is only seriously injured. Baffled by his ability to survive, he realizes through a flashback that he has been under "Buddha Mode", a cheat code which prevents his health points from dropping below one throughout the comic's duration. Frohman inadvertently turns off the mode, and even spoils an opportunity to be rescued by a group of Vortigaunts, as both Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance are at the start of Episode One. In the end, Frohman dies unceremoniously, while survivors of the City 17 uprising find him dead.
Reception
The comic has had positive reception from both the public and editors of various gaming magazines. The Globe and Mail stated the comic "stands out from most other gamics [comics consisting of game screenshots] by virtue of the quality of its writing and presentation". Online magazine GGL.com said that "Concerned is one of the funnier online gaming comics, and perhaps the best single-game parody in the bunch", and The Irish Gamers described Concerned as a "hit webcomic". Computer Gaming World described the comic as "funny", and PC Zone called it a "mildly amusing HL2 comic". The comic had also caught the attention of reviewers outside the United States and the United Kingdom; the Romanian magazine Level said the comic is "a recommendation to every fan of the game and anyone looking for a good daily laugh".
The comic's popularity, as well as the fact that Livingston stated he does not intend to continue the comic through Half-Life 2: Episode One, led to the appearance of an 'unofficial' sequel to Concerned, entitled Concerned 2: A Concerned Rip-Off: The Continuing Adventures of Gordon Frohman, and created by Norman N. Black.
External links
Official links
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- – a collection of distinct, but related short comic strips
Articles and interviews
- by Alex Petraglia of , on March 3, 2006
- by Paul Semel of , on March 20, 2006
- by Chad Sapieha of The Globe and Mail, on April 4, 2006
- by Ross Miller of Joystiq, on November 2, 2006
- by All Games Interactive on November 30, 2006 (, Christopher Livingston appears at 14:38)
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