One thing that kind of blows me away about the older Marvel and DC comics is actually how few titles they actually published back in the old days. If you look at this list of just main Marvel titles taking out some of the monster books and other titles they did, it's still not much and I know part of that was their old distribution setup.
I can't help but think the quality of the current comics would be so much better and in the long run the fan following better if they just went back to leaner lines and not tried to just push out so many titles every week.
SPINE TITLES of Marvel Universe: these titles minus the 'reprint period' of early 70s for X-men, pretty much have run since the 60s
Fantastic Four
Amazing Spider-man
Avengers
Uncanny X-Men
Captain America
Thor
Iron Man
Daredevil
Incredible Hulk
Pre-69 other original period series
Dr. Strange
Sub-Mariner
Silver Surfer
Sgt. Fury and his Howlin’ Commandos
Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD
Captain Marvel
Human Torch (solo in Strange Tales) w/The Thing on certain issues
Ant-Man/Giant Man (solo in Tales to Astonish)
Captain Savage
Kid Colt Outlaw
Rawhide Kid
1970s
1970
Ka-Zar
The Inhumans (backups in Thor then in 1970 Amazing Adventures)
Black Widow (Amazing Advenures 1970)
Conan the Barbarian (also in Savage Tales)
Western Gunfighter (mix of reprints/new stories featuring original “Ghost Rider”)
1971
The Defenders (first in Marvel Feature then own title)
Kull the Conqueror (first in Creatures on Loose then own title)
― earlnash, Sunday, 20 October 2013 22:02 (ten years ago) link