The century-old United Media, a powerful Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate that represented some of the most popular comic strips of all time including Peanuts, Garfield, Dilbert, Nancy, Pearls Before Swine, Frazz, Big Nate, Over the Hedge, Tarzan, and Rose Is Rose, to name just a few of the more prominent contemporary and classic strips represented by United. United’s strips will be distributed by Universal u-click as the fading newspaper comic strip business consolidates with just two major players, Universal and King Features left.

 

It’s not that United Media ever failed to make a profit, it remained in the black to the very end, but the handwriting was on the wall last spring when Iconix acquired United Media Licensing, which handled the lucrative licensing of United Media properties such as Peanuts and Dilbert. As the Washington Post points out, United Media itself was born of consolidation some 33 years ago with the merger of the UFS and NEA syndicates.

 

As United Media executive Lisa Klem Wilson told the Post: “Consolidation has been coming for a long time. The market can’t support as many syndicates as it used to. And now Universal is on the forefront of mobile delivery.”

 

But will “mobile delivery” make up for the decline in newspaper circulation? Will Webcomics eventually replace newspaper strips? What does the future hold for the two remaining syndicates?