Uclick LLC was an American corporation (a division of

Andrews McMeel Universal Andrews McMeel Universal (AMU) is an American media corporation based in Kansas City, Missouri. It was founded in 1970 by Jim Andrews and John McMeel as Universal Press Syndicate and was renamed in 1997 to AMU to reflect the diversification that ...

) selling "digital entertainment content" for the desktop,

the web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

and

mobile phones A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

. Uclick operated several consumer websites, including the

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

and

editorial cartoon A political cartoon, a form of editorial cartoon, is a cartoon graphic with caricatures of public figures, expressing the artist's opinion. An artist who writes and draws such images is known as an editorial cartoonist. They typically combine a ...

site

GoComics GoComics is a website launched in 2005 by the digital entertainment provider Uclick. It was originally created as a distribution portal for comic strips on mobile phones, but in 2006, the site was redesigned and expanded to include online strips ...

and the

puzzle A puzzle is a game, Problem solving, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together (Disentanglement puzzle, or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to arrive at th ...

and

casual game A casual game is a video game targeted at a mass market audience, as opposed to a hardcore game, which is targeted at hobbyist gamers. Casual games may exhibit any type of gameplay and genre. They generally involve simpler rules, shorter sessio ...

sites ThePuzzleSociety.com and UclickGames.com. Uclick content included comic strips, editorial cartoons, puzzles, casual games,

manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

comic books A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

, syndicated columns,

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...

and

illustration An illustration is a decoration, interpretation or visual explanation of a text, concept or process, designed for integration in print and digital published media, such as posters, flyers, magazines, books, teaching materials, animations, vid ...

. Uclick content was distributed online through consumer and news web portals such as

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

MSNBC.com MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

washingtonpost.com ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nat ...

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

USA TODAY ''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...

, and

AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017� ...

. Comic strip and cartoon content from Uclick was available online and on mobile phones through the company's website, Uclick.com. In July 2009, Uclick merged with Andrews McMeel's

Universal Press Syndicate Universal Press Syndicate (UPS), a subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, was an independent press syndicate. It distributed lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and other content. Popular columns include Dear Abby, Ann Coulter, Roger Eb ...

(UPS) to form

Universal Uclick Andrews McMeel Syndication (formerly Universal Uclick) is an American content syndicate which provides syndication in print, online and on mobile devices for a number of lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and cartoons and various other c ...

(now known as

Andrews McMeel Syndication Andrews McMeel Syndication (formerly Universal Uclick) is an American content syndicate which provides syndication in print, online and on mobile devices for a number of lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and cartoons and various other c ...

History

Universal New Media was formed in 1996 by

; it was renamed Uclick a year later. Beginning in January 2009, Andrews McMeel Universal suffered a series of layoffs due to department consolidation and corporate restructuring. These layoffs led to Uclick's July 2009 merger with UPS to form

Comic strips and panels

As the digital entertainment division of Andrews McMeel Universal, Uclick was the official online distributor of all comic strips syndicated by Andrews McMeel Universal's newspaper syndication division,

. Uclick also owned and operated GoComics, a comics aggregate website featuring not only comic strips currently syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, but also webcomics, discontinued titles such as ''

Calvin and Hobbes ''Calvin and Hobbes'' is a daily American comic strip created by cartoonist Bill Watterson that was syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995. Commonly cited as "the last great newspaper comic", ''Calvin and Hobbes'' has enjoyed ...

'', ''

The Boondocks Boondocks are remote, usually brushy areas. Boondocks may also refer to: * The Boondocks (band), an Estonian rock band * ''The Boondocks'' (comic strip), a comic strip by Aaron McGruder ** ''The Boondocks'' (2005 TV series), the television ser ...

'', and ''

Bloom County ''Bloom County'' is an American comic strip by Berkeley Breathed which originally ran from December 8, 1980, until August 6, 1989. It examined events in politics and culture through the viewpoint of a fanciful small town in Middle America, wh ...

'', original works like ''The

New Adventures of Queen Victoria ''The New Adventures of Queen Victoria'' is a daily webcomic created by Pab Sungenis. It uses the photo-manipulation technique popularized by Adobe Photoshop and other image editing programs to insert actual photographs and paintings of the charac ...

'' and '' Bleeker: The Rechargeable Dog'', and a selection of syndicated comic strips from

Creators Syndicate Creators Syndicate (also known as Creators) is an American independent distributor of comic strips and syndicated columns to daily newspapers, websites, and other digital outlets. When founded in 1987, Creators Syndicate became one of the few suc ...

and

Tribune Media Services Tribune Content Agency (TCA) is a syndication company owned by Tribune Publishing. TCA had previously been known as the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate (CTNYNS), Tribune Company Syndicate, and Tribune Media Se ...

. In October 2008, Uclick launched a GoComics

gadget A gadget is a mechanical device or any ingenious article. Gadgets are sometimes referred to as '' gizmos''. History The etymology of the word is disputed. The word first appears as reference to an 18th-century tool in glassmaking that was develo ...

for

iGoogle iGoogle (formerly Google Personalized Homepage) was a customizable Ajax-based start page or personal web portal launched by Google in May 2005. It was discontinued on November 1, 2013,Google SupportiGoogle's Decommission/ref> because the compan ...

which allowed users to read comic strips on their iGoogle pages.

Puzzles and games

Uclick distributed daily puzzles and casual games through consumer and news web portals as well as through its own puzzle and game portals, The Puzzle Society and UclickGames. Uclick products included

crosswords A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answ ...

and other word games, number placement puzzles like

Sudoku Sudoku (; ja, 数独, sūdoku, digit-single; originally called Number Place) is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. In classic Sudoku, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row ...

and

Kakuro Kakuro or Kakkuro or Kakoro ( ja, カックロ) is a kind of logic puzzle that is often referred to as a mathematical transliteration of the crossword. Kakuro puzzles are regular features in many math-and-logic puzzle publications across the worl ...

, jigsaw puzzles and other casual games.

Syndicated columns and text features

Uclick-syndicated columns and text features were distributed online through consumer and news web portals as well as through Uclick's syndicated column and text feature consumer site, uExpress.com.

Comic books and manga

In 2006, Uclick launched the United States’ first comic book reader application for mobile phones. The introductory line of titles included ''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'', ''

The Five Fists of Science ''The Five Fists of Science'' is a steampunk graphic novel created by writer Matt Fraction and artist Steven Sanders. It was published in 2006 by Image Comics. Plot Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain and Bertha von Suttner combine forces to try to br ...

'', ''

Gødland ''Gødland'' is an American comic book ongoing series, series by Joe Casey and Tom Scioli, set in the Image Universe and published by Image Comics from 2005 in comics, 2005 to 2012 in comics, 2012. Publication history The series was conceived as ...

'', '' PvP'', and ''

Too Much Coffee Man Too Much Coffee Man (TMCM) is an American satirical superhero created by cartoonist Shannon Wheeler. Too Much Coffee Man wears what appears to be a spandex version of old-fashioned red " long johns" with a large mug attached atop his head. He ...

''. In July 2006, Uclick announced the launch of a mobile phone version of ''Guilstein'', a manga and anime title that had never been published in any form in the U.S. In July 2007, Uclick launched ''Thunder Road'', the first comic book produced solely for mobile phone distribution in the U.S. Uclick later added titles from

Devil's Due Publishing Devil's Due Publishing (often abbreviated as DDP) is an independent comic book publisher in the United States. Based in Chicago, Illinois, DDP is best known for its wide selection of genres, including licensed and original creator-owned proper ...

Image Comics Image Comics is an American comic book publisher and is the third largest comic book and graphic novel publisher in the industry in both unit and market share. It was founded in 1992 by several high-profile illustrators as a venue for creator-ow ...

IDW Publishing IDW Publishing is an American publisher of comic books, graphic novels, art books, and comic strip collections. It was founded in 1999 as the publishing division of Idea and Design Works, LLC (IDW), itself formed in 1999, and is regularly recog ...

, and independently published books such as Jeff Smith's ''Bone''.

References

External links

* {{Universal Press columns Online mass media companies of the United States