thumb|Cover of the collection Triumph of the Whim
Space Moose is a Canadian underground comic strip that appeared in the University of Alberta's student newspaper, The Gateway, between October 3, 1989, and 1999. Almost all of the strips were penned by Adam Thrasher, a student at the university. For career-related reasons, many archives refer to the author by his post-production pen name "Mustafa Al-Habib". Macleans Canada said that Space Moose "was deliberately provocative". Ellen Schoek, the author of I Was There: A Century of Alumni Stories about the University of Alberta, 1906–2006, said that Space Moose "left no subject unscathed, from fraternities to Christianity and obesity, from sexual proclivities to racism".
The strip follows the adventures of Space Moose, an anthropomorphic, nihilistic moose with asymmetrical eyes and a Star Trek uniform, as he violates every possible societal and behavioral norm. His roommates Marlo Smefner, Billy the Bionic Badger, and Bald Dwarf are often the accomplices or victims of his actions. Macleans Canada said that Space Moose was "probably the most famous comic strip character in Canadian university history". Most strips were available on the Space Moose web site.
History
thumb|Thrasher originally created Space Moose while enrolled at [[Ross Sheppard High School 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."