Space Moose - Development

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 20-pound (9.1 kg) 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 "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 Circle, 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's 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.