Dan Rosandich – RIP

Magazine cartoonist Dan Rosandich has passed away.

From the obituary:

Daniel Rosandich, 65, a resident of Houghton passed away at his home on January 9, 2023, following an apparent heart attack.

A celebration of Dan’s life will be announced by the Memorial Chapel Funeral Home at a later time.

Dan began his cartooning career as a teenager and stayed with it for nearly 50 years.

1975 saw Dan contributing to small local papers and shoppers, and then in 1976 he sold his first magazine cartoon to Mechanix Illustrated and his career was off and tooning.

An interview with Dan at Catholic Profiles list some of the major magazines Dan has sold to that included Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping magazine, Better Homes & Gardens, The National Enquirer, Barron’s magazine, The National Review, The Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine, and dozens of national trade journals, newsletters, and regional family-oriented magazines.

His Humor Times profile continues with some of those specialty magazines, such as: American Medical News, Medical Economics, Intermountain Contractor magazine, Building Briefs magazine, Constructioneer, Kansas Lawyer and many other specialty publications.

Then there are his cartoon contributions to books, like a number of Chicken Soup for the Soul volumes.

Dan had a couple of syndicated comics. Mum’s The Word was a pantomime panel and part of Tomorrow’s Comics! effort to supply weekly newspapers with a comics page. Yooper Bloopers was a self-syndicated panel aimed at publications in and about Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Yooper Bloopers adds Dan to a cartoonist history page that includes such luminaries as Tad Dorgan and Billy DeBeck. According to Yooper-Michigan “Yooper” was a word coined by Dan:

It was during this time that cartoonist  Dan Rosandich stopped in at the Daily Mining Gazette in Houghton, Michigan with some of his cartoons. At the time, the editor was Bob Skuggen.
 Those who knew Bob back in the day, can attest to the fact he was a big proponent and advocate of The Keweenaw Peninsula and tourism in general. Skuggen liked Dan’s cartoons but said they should focus on life in the U.P. and after a while, a new set of U.P.  related cartoons were given to Bob for consideration. Although he really liked what he saw, they needed a title and asked Rosandich to come up with a good name  for the cartoons. After bouncing around a few names & titles with some friends, Dan came up with the perfect term and this is when “Yooper” was born.

In 2014 Yooper was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and grabbed national headlines as the reference volume included a blooper in their pronunciation of the word, forgetting the ‘p’.

40 years of cartooning gave Dan experience known to but a few – he was happy to share what he learned with others, especially those starting out. For Press Pad he discussed the art of cartooning from pen and ink to digital.

On his own website Dan expands on the hows and whys:

Cartoon maker software is readily available to help cartoonists.

I prefer to use the old method of drawing that requires pen and ink on paper. Basically,  cartoons actually drawn by hand or “manually” so to speak.

It’s because no technology existed when I was a child and my interest in drawing cartoons initially began at a young age.

I use technology to my advantage by colorizing my cartoons digitally, I communicate with those professionals who may be interested in my work via email. And I derive sales of my cartoons and illustration services through my online portfolio and cartoons I make available through my website…

Dan also contributed a regular column on cartooning to Gag Recap.

Dan’s cartoons can be enjoyed and purchased at CartoonStock and on his Danscartoons site.