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. Around 1997, the comic received 10,000 visits per month. 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." A cartoon that was printed in "The Gateway", "Antlers of the Damned," depicted an angel and featured a dog sodomizing Space Moose. 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 born on September 9, 1971, in London, Ontario. He and his family moved to Edmonton when he was 10 years old. Thrasher received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Alberta in 1994. 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." He received his PhD in medical sciences in 2002. As of 2011 Thrasher is now a professor at the University of Houston. "Macleans Canada" stated that the most controversial strip in "Space Moose"'s history was "Clobberin' Time," which satirized the Take Back the Night march, an annual event held on Jasper Avenue in Edmonton to protest violence perpetrated by men against women.