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 tripodal assault synth. 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, causing him to run out of time; Dr. Breen's teleporter explodes and 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. Themes Livingston stated that the comic was a good way of pointing out several shortcomings of video games and first-person shooters in particular. He emphasized the presence of various objects throughout the levels of games which were intended to aid the player, but would have little chance of being found in the real world in a similar manner. Much of the comic's dark humor is derived from its contrasts with Half-Life 2: in a depressing, dark vision of a conquered humanity's future, Gordon Freeman becomes a hero and savior; the similarly named Gordon Frohman, on the other hand, is just an average person, improbably cheerful to the point of stupidity, and somewhat naïve as