This really does need to be remembered
And most of the iconic characters appeared when superheroes were fresh and new for a lot of people
Even with the arrival of the marvel characters in the 60s many of the older ones like batman who had been around were still fairly obscure because a lot of the books had been pulped already ( hence their current rareity)
But whilst people will always say older fans are blocking them, how realistic is this argument, no fan can actually do that in all seriousness, sure they might not buy them or say they don't like them, but that's not actually gonna stop quality coming through
Icon status took time and to an extent a novelty of character that just doesn't exist and to an extent cannot exist anymore ( at least within the big two easily)
I think a character breaking out like say Spiderman or wolverine or such highly unlikely within the books themselves, the sales for the hobby just are not there, but maybe through tangential media, like say miles with his animated movie
And in fairness I think this was the case back in the day too, a lot of the iconic s from the golden age became so through cinema serials (batman and robin, WW, superman's films, brought them out of the books and into the general home audience) earlier radio shows, TV , cartoons, even Spidey did with his cartoon and the hulk with his TV show
Heck the X-Men became household names off a cartoon for a good few of them
As the MCU moves away from avengers this I think will help