In early 1934, Eastern Color Printing president George Janosik formed a 50/50 joint venture with Dell president George Delacorte to publish and market a comic book for retail sales. As a test to see if the public would be willing to pay for comic books, Dell published the single-issue "Famous Funnies: Series 1", also printed by Eastern Color. Unlike its predecessor, it was intended from the start to be sold rather than given away. A 68-page collection of comic strips previously published in "Funnies on Parade" and "Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics", this 10¢ periodical had a print run of 35,000 and sold successfully. After the previous successes, Eastern employee Harold Moore proposed a monthly comic book series. When Dell nonetheless declined to continue, Eastern Color on its own published "Famous Funnies" #1 (cover-dated July 1934), also a 68-page periodical selling for 10¢. Distributed to newsstands by the mammoth American News Company, it proved a hit with readers during the cash-strapped Great Depression, selling 90 percent of its 200,000 print run; however, its costs left Eastern Color more than $4,000 in debt (prompting George Delacorte to sell his interest back to Eastern). That situation quickly changed, however, with the book turning a $30,000 profit each issue starting with issue #12. The success of "Famous Funnies" soon led to the title being sold on newsstands alongside slicker magazines. Eastern began to experiment with modifying the newspaper reprints to be more suitable to the comic book format. Lettering, reduced in reproduction to the point of illegibility, was reworked for the size of the comic book page. Adventure strips, reprinted in several weeks' worth of strips at a time, were trimmed of panels providing a recap of previous events, contributing to a concise and more smoothly flowing version of the story. "Famous Funnies" would eventually run 218 issues, inspire imitators, and largely launch a new mass medium. The Ledger Syndicate provided many strips for "Famous Funnies" issues #1–87 (from 1934 to 1941), including A. E. Hayward's "Somebody's Stenog" and "The Back-Seat Driver"; Frank Godwin's "Connie", "The Wet Blanket", "Babe Bunting", "Roy Powers", "Vignettes of Life", and "War on Crime"; F. O. Alexander's "Hairbreadth Harry" and "High-Gear Homer"; Clare Victor Dwiggins' "Footprints on the Sands of Time"; Joe Bowers' "Dizzy Dramas"; Gar (Schmitt)'s "Dumb-Bells"; and Walt Munson & Kemp Starrett's "Such is Life".