Wheelchair Comic Rolls Into Syndication

The creators of a new comic strip are out to challenge the notion that being in a wheelchair is no laughing matter.

“Mulch,” whose main character uses a wheelchair, was created by Paul Fell, a Lincoln Journal Star editorial cartoonist, and Bob Shill, a writer in Veradale, Wash.

They know their subject well.

Fell, 54, was in a wheelchair for six months after being stricken in 1989 with a severe strep infection. Shill, 43, has been in a wheelchair since a 1971 diving accident left him paralyzed from the neck down.

“I make fun of myself quite a bit,” Shill said of the strip. “It ranges from slapstick to poignant.”

In one strip, a talkative neighbor girl tells Mulch that she likes to talk to him because, unlike some other people, he doesn’t walk away.

“Mulch” is carried by the Casper Star-Tribune in Wyoming and the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah. It will be made available for newspapers nationally next week through Signature Features, a syndication company owned by Shill’s brother.

Tribune Editor James E. Shelledy said he chose to run “Mulch” because it was funny and different.

“The comics page ought to have something for everybody,” he said. “Although I would never have picked it up just because of the topic. It had to be as good as some of the others.” He said it is too early to tell what the newspaper’s readers think of the strip.

Shill knows “Mulch” might offend some readers but said he is ready to take on any critics. “I’ve been in a wheelchair for almost 30 years, so I figure if any one person can make fun of somebody in a wheelchair, it’s pretty much me.”