Space Moose

in Edmonton. Thrasher said that he began drawing Space Moose while enrolled at Ross Sheppard High School in Edmonton in order to make a friend laugh. The first Space Moose comic premiered in the October 3, 1989, edition of The Gateway. In 1991 Thrasher left the University of Alberta and worked for Northwestern Utilities in Edmonton; during the four months he worked with the company, he did not produce any Space Moose comics, and the school newspaper replaced Space Moose's slot with Colby Christ, a comic about Colby Cosh, a friend of Thrasher. When Thrasher returned to the university, Colby Christ was replaced by Space Moose, which had resumed. Thrasher and Donald R. "Don" Husereau drew "Colby Christ meets Space Moose", a strip that was a segue between the series. In 1997, Space Moose ran for Students' Union President and finished a close third with 1,400 votes (only 11 votes behind the second place candidate, Hoops Harrison). This led to changes being made in students' union rules that would prevent any future "joke" candidate from actually winning an election. Due to the increasing popularity of the cartoon, people took away Space Moose's campaign posters as collector's items. In 1997, due to a controversy involving the strip "Clobberin' Time", the comic was moved from University of Alberta biomedical department servers to private servers. Thrasher said that Darkcore Networks, a web host in Edmonton and a subsidiary of OA Internet, one of the largest internet service providers in Edmonton, invited Thrasher to post his comics there. Thrasher established a new website which housed over 170 Space Moose comic strips, including "Clobberin' Time". The website included an advertising banner from Microsoft. It also had a hit counter which, as of September 10, 1998, stated that the site had been accessed 17,800 times since November 1997. The website included a section called "Clobberin, about the controversial comic strip. The section invited readers to "fume with the feminists who banned Space Moose from the university network". As a result, the University of Alberta campus chaplains published a joint letter of recrimination. Another Space Moose cartoon, that depicted Snow White facing sodomy at the hands of the Seven Dwarves, was published in Slur, a punkzine. As a result, A&B Sound withdrew its advertising from Slur and banned the magazine from its stores. Thrasher was scheduled to receive his doctorate in 2000. Cosh said "His need to complete his doctoral thesis explains the shocking paucity of strips in 1999." hitting his targets. The strip's presence ignited a controversy across many campuses. The university governed the web servers which hosted Space Moose, so it took action to remove the comic from its servers. Burton Smith, the acting dean of students, said that the administration asked Thrasher to voluntarily remove the comic strip from the university servers, and that if he did so, he would continue to be able to use his university computer account. Thrasher moved his comic to a privately hosted web server in Edmonton. The controversy garnered media attention throughout Canada. Thrasher said "I'm an underground cartoonist -- I've always tried to keep a low profile." The author was sent to a university disciplinary hearing. the university's discipline officer, reviewed the university's charges. Five of the women who had initially sent complaints against Thrasher testified during the appeal hearing. The appeal process was completed on Monday November 2, 1998, with the university overturning the charges against Thrasher. The Alberta Report said in 1997 that "Space Moose is a festival of caricatured scatology, violence, perversion, irreligion and even pedophilia. It has stimulated outrage before, but in five years the university had never suppressed the strip, despite lampoons of University institutions, Trekkies, the mentally retarded, and Christians. Only one group, it seems, has the clout to make the university turn censor." Brice Smith argued that "One almost does not even know where to begin addressing this kind of hate-filled message. For me, the most horrifying aspect is its total disregard for the very real extent of violence by men against women." In regards to the university code of conduct, Green and Trimble argued that it needed to be amended so that it would prohibit future strips like "Clobberin' Time". Thrasher said that the code was unclear, even though it does not remove rights from the university community or members of the university. Thrasher argued that the code needed to be amended to make it clearer. In regards to the inclusion of the URL in The Gateway, Sampert argued that the editors "did a really scabby way of censoring but promoting at the same time." Rose Yewchuk, the editor of The Gateway, argued that the Space Moose comic that was published in that issue would not have made sense to the reader unless the reader saw the previous comic, therefore the newspaper published the address. ==Development==

Space Moose was originally created for the entertainment of Paul Diedrich, a friend of Thrasher. Diedrich coined the name "Space Moose". Thrasher said "I drew this thing with all the stereotypes of a goofy character--lopsided googly eyes, buck teeth that hang out, and antlers." At first, Space Moose was a collaboration between Thrasher, Thrasher's friend Jason Kapalka, and Donald R. "Don" Husereau, a pharmacy student. After drawing one Space Moose cartoon, Husereau left the strip's production but continued to be an advisor. For the first year, Thrasher collaborated with friend Jason Kapalka. After the first year, Thrasher did the strip alone. Originally Thrasher used materials from his mother's office to create the comics. As the comic progressed, he began using a black Sanford uniball to ink. The creator pencilled lightly with a very hard lead, such as a 5H. The paper used was ordinary sets of bleached paper. In addition Thrasher used a portable drawing board with a T-square. Thrasher said "My cartoons, more often than not, challenge the reader to think about things that are horrible, reprehensible and irredeemable. If I have achieved that, there seems to be only two possible reactions: anger or laughter. I aim for the latter and put up with the former." Thrasher said that his influences include Scott Adams, author of Dilbert; Matt Groening, author of The Simpsons; and Gary Larson, author of The Far Side. Colby Cosh said "[h]e's glad they pushed the envelope to allow biting cartoonists such as him to thrive." Thrasher said "When I grew up, newspaper comics were sickly sweet." Thrasher believed that Family Circus, Marmaduke, and Ziggy were "offensively lame". The first year of Space Moose had obscure references to many Edmonton-based bulletin board system participants. Cosh said "That's why those strips mostly make no sense. They're in-jokes that got into the campus paper for some reason. Quality control was a real problem then, as now." Cosh added "Adam would prefer that you just ignore the 1989–90 episodes of Space Moose. With respect to Jason Kapalka's gag writing, the real jumping-off point for "Space Moose" is the ingenious "Calvin and Slobbes", the first strip of 1990–91." Originally Space Moose had a head of hair. In 1993 Thrasher dropped the hair, because he felt the character looked better with a bald head. Thrasher added "Sometimes, the hair is useful--for example, in the "Summertime tips" strip, where he slicked it back to look suave, or in "Extreme Space Moose," where the mane looks like fire and adds intensity to the drawing." The word "bee" often occurs in the strip, and sometimes a developmentally disabled man appears. This is based on Thrasher's experience while riding on a school bus with a boy with Down syndrome. The boy often sung softly; Thrasher later learned that the boy was trying to say the word "bee" using different pitches and tones. After the discovery, Thrasher decided to introduce the word in his vocabulary, with different tones leading to different meanings. ==Characters==

• Space Moose - Space Moose is an anthropomorphic, nihilistic moose with asymmetrical eyes and a Star Trek uniform who violates every behavioral norm and societal taboo he can find. A native of the planet Olmak, he was sent to earth and raised by the Moose family in Canada. Moose chose to attend the University of Alberta. Thrasher said "Four years later, with a zoology degree in hand, Space Moose made his boyhood dreams come true and became the Generation X version of Merlin Perkins." In the Space Moose FAQ, when asked about Space Moose's sexuality, Thrasher said "My personal opinion is that Space Moose simply likes illicit sex. Since gay coitus is so taboo (and since most of his friends happen to be male), that is the brand he most often indulges in. Still, he is not exclusively gay, because he hits on Miranda [...] and he fantasizes about screwing women [...]." Thrasher explained that Space Moose believes that "[...] the best sex is sex that is perceived as wrong or inappropriate. Missexual?" Colby Cosh, a friend of Thrasher, said that in his view, "Space Moose was basically heterosexual but would do ANYTHING to create chaos." Cosh explained, "Chicks are what gives him spontaneous erections in shopping malls [cf. "Saved by the fat fuck"], but he'll drill glory holes in his own walls to piss people off [cf. "Glory holes"]. Obviously he does have a thing about anuses (ani?), but so do a lot of heterosexuals. Of course, there's also the fact that he is neither human nor even of Earthly origin. "Missexual" is definitely the best formulation I have seen." In 1997, Thrasher conducted a World Wide Web poll on Space Moose's sexuality. 42% of respondents said that it was "undefinable". 24% said "bisexual". 3% each said that Space Moose was "homosexual" and "asexual". Space Moose's Star Trek shirt had been coloured differently in different strips. Thrasher said "Since the colourizers can't even agree on Space Moose's own exact hue, and since Space Moose has never been given a formal Starfleet rank, speculation may proceed freely." • Marlo Smefner - Thrasher said "Of Space Moose's cohorts, Marlo is probably the most normal" and "Having had somewhat of a moral upbringing, Marlo does not agree with Space's seek-and-destroy philosophy of life, and tries to curb the antlered one's nihilistic ventures whenever possible. Despite the animosity between them, Space Moose cannot help but see a little of himself in Marlo." Thrasher introduced Marlo in 1994. At first Thrasher intended for Marlo to be a one-time character, but then he realized that he could act as the comic's straight man. Several commentators asked Thrasher whether Marlo is supposed to represent him. Cosh explained "This may be because Adam often disavows Space Moose's own outlook on life." Thrasher responded that Marlo is not an avatar of himself. • Billy the Bionic Badger - Billy, a honey badger, met Space Moose at the University of Alberta while participating in the university's engineering program. Thrasher said that Billy "underwent a series of surgeries which eventually replaced all his skeletal muscles with advanced silicon polymer servo-actuators, rendering him the world's strongest rodent." Cosh noted on the Space Moose FAQ that Thrasher was aware that badgers are not actually rodents. • Bald Dwarf - A small man who attended the University of Alberta, Bald Dwarf often organizes equal rights parades for various socioeconomic groups. ==References==