Originally Posted by
codystarbuck
It was Timely's top selling title; but, it wasn't consistently in the same level as Captain Marvel and Superman. They ruled the roost. Timely itself was more in the middle of the pack, in terms of comic book publishers. Their specialty was churning out knock-offs of whatever was popular. National/All-American were the top dogs, with Fawcett close behind, and Dell right there, due to the Disney and Warner stuff, as well as comic strip reprints and the like. MLJ (later, Archie Comics) outsold Timely routinely.
The Simon & Kirby stuff was extremely popular; but, they were gone after ten issues. The book settled down after that. Cap and Sub-Mariner were still their top selling comics and they outsold a lot of the rest of the market; but, they weren't enough to elevate Timely to the upper echelon. Their model was to go for volume, rather than high sales on quality titles.
You also have to remember that newsstand sales were massive in that period and comics were read by kids across the nation. Everyone read something, even illiterates picked up magazines for photos and illustrations. You had no tv; just motion pictures, radio, books, newspapers and magazines. Once tv came along, the kids started to leave behind comics, since they could see more live adventure. The witch hunt of the 50s made it even worse. The Silver Age still sold a lot of comics; but, nowhere near the level of the Golden Age. You couldn't even think about launching a comic in the 1940s, with today's level of blockbuster title sales.