Web Weeklyskimask



Metrocop.net is a website rich with Half Life history. In addition to a wealth of articles and an extensive archive of comics, Metrocop.net hosts a community of content creators and fans of the Half Life series. As a fan of Half Life myself (and a long time player of Garry's Mod), my interest was certainly piqued. I caught up with Mythos, the Webmaster of Metrocop, after some delay, to get some insight into his corner of the web.
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                                                                                                                                     metrocop

 mythos Mythos                                                                                                                  
 "Hello, Badgermein, thanks for the opportunity to do this."


                                                                                                                          Badgermein skimask
"Hello, Mythos, thank you for taking the time to talk to me today. Would you mind starting by introducing yourself and your website?"


 mythos Mythos
"I'm Mythos, or at least that's the name I've gone by online for the past two decades. I've been a part of the online Half-Life community since September 2007, when I joined the now-defunct PHWOnline community that was dedicated to content created with Garry's Mod, namely, webcomics and machinima. Since 2012 (with a break between 2018 and 2022) I've run a small website dedicated to hosting comics created with the Source engine, Metrocop (https://metrocop.net), which was relaunched last year and now has over 750 comics. Since the relaunch, I've also started to post long-form Half-Life-related articles as well, which seem to have been quite well-received by the community."



Badgermein skimask

"A lot of the content on your site is SFM comic related, but you have a lot of articles about the HL community in general. Do you write all of the articles yourself?"



 mythos Mythos

"Yes, all the articles on the site so far have been written by me personally. When I made the decision to reboot Metrocop, I wanted to split the focus between archiving comics like before and creating other types of Half-Life-related content that I enjoyed. The days of fansites dedicated to producing content about a particular niche are long gone but are something I deeply miss, so I decided to make my own modern website in that vein, a cross between the new and the nostalgic."



Badgermein skimask
"You’ve done some interviewing as well, how did the interview process go for the PHWOnline article? Was it hard to find former members? Personally, I’m impressed by the comprehensiveness of this article."


 mythos Mythos
"Thanks! The PHWOnline article was a passion project for me. You might be surprised to hear I had quite a love-hate relationship with the website, having been a part of it right before it started to fall, and I actually (rage)quit the website and vowed never to go back. Time heals all wounds, however, and with time I just ended up feeling a sense of longing for the old days, which spurred me to try and document the lost history of the website.

"For tracking former members, I first started with those I already knew how to reach, like Jeff Eastman and Mjolnir82991, and the big names I knew were essential to telling the story, otherwise there wouldn't be much of a point in pursuing it. Surprisingly Twitter turned out to be a great means of locating people, something that probably isn't true anymore — I found PHW VIPs like Michael K. Clements and Joseph "Slick" Shea through there, and luckily they were more than happy to put up with my incessant questioning. Otherwise it was a matter of researching a lot and spending a lot of time on Wayback Machine and Google (it's scary how easy it actually is to find someone online if you put in the effort, not a skill I'm too proud of!).

"The interviewing process itself was quite amateurish, I have no formal background in journalism whatsoever. I first started the project by doing a spreadsheet of a timeline for PHW through a lot of research on Wayback Machine, alongside some of my own unreliable memories (that were quickly corrected by facts). Once I had that, it was a matter of compiling a series of tailored questions for each individual based on the big events of the website. The interviews themselves were simply conducted by e-mail — not very "oral" for an "oral history", admittedly, but I lacked the time and means to do them any other way — with very little follow-up. Everyone was super nice and willing to go through it, even Waxx who has little memory of those days or interest in reminiscing. It's honestly my proudest moment of the new website and I couldn't have done it without their help."


Badgermein skimask
"Obviously, you think that archiving is important. The Half Life community produces so much content, from SFM animation to live action movies, what made you choose SFM comics?" 


 mythos Mythos

"Comics created with the Source engine are personal to me. It's where I first joined the Half-Life community and one of my first creative outlets — I'm still pretty proud of The Adventures of Hercule Cubbage and intend to go back to it at some point to finish the story. That, plus nostalgia for stuff I did as a teenager as I hit my 30s helped revive my interest in this forgotten digital art form.

"There's certainly not a lack of high-quality machinima or mods for Half-Life, but those are hardly forgotten! Comics, on the other hand, had been spurned towards the recesses of DeviantArt when there was so much great stuff done circa 2006-2010, so I really wanted to keep that alive somehow. I think I've managed to do exactly that and I'm grateful for people still checking these out, and even more so for the people doing brand-new ones in this day and age. Though I'm still waiting for those Source 2 comics!"


Badgermein skimask
"Metrocop.net was relaunched relatively recently, what was the primary reason for it’s shutdown?"

 mythos Mythos
"Metrocop shutting down was a combination of factors. The first, simply put, was burnout; I'd been working on the site since 2012 and I had gotten pretty exhausted and disillusioned with it. At the same time, many changes were happening in my life at the time and I needed to focus more on my career and other real-life stuff, which served as the main justification. As a result, I made the decision to stop updating the site — although, focused on archiving as I already was back then, I never really deleted it, and you can still find the original site at https://metrocop.wordpress.com completely intact. Obviously it didn't stick, and not a year later I was already starting work on a brand new version of the site built from scratch, thanks to a few Web development skills I'd picked up in-between versions."


Badgermein skimask
"Do you have any major changes to your website that you hope to implement in the near future? Or do you feel that sticking with your current formula is a recipe for success?"


 mythos Mythos

"There's no shortage of ideas I have for Metrocop, it's just a matter of whether I'll get the time (and patience) to work on them. Certainly a place for the community to share comics more openly besides Discord would be a big one; Discord is great for chatting and fostering a close-knit community, but it is dreadful for posting long-form comics, let alone finding them amidst all the messaging. That said, that's a big undertaking and I currently can't focus on something that huge — for better or worse, Metrocop is and always was a one-man project, so the scope is always more limited compared to something like the excellent LambdaGeneration community.

"There's also been talk of perhaps expanding Metrocop to other areas, like modding or even machinima, but the main focus will remain on archiving comics and the occasional article. Any big changes to Metrocop probably won't be coming soon due to (once again) some turning points happening in my life that are taking my focus away from this passion project. But, much like before, it's really only a matter of time until I refocus on Metrocop and push it forward some more."


Badgermein skimask
"Thank you again for your time, Mythos."