I mentioned this in the Civil War II thread, that I think Marvel is building this up to be 2 separate imprints / universes, maybe even similar to an Earth-1, Earth-2 situation, with all these duplicate heroes.

I don't like it either, almost exactly the same as your preferences.

Marvel is practically dead to me. Though I'm not reading it at the moment, Daredevil has been good for years and has remained non-bloated for the most part.

X-Men first, now the Avengers, Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-Man...not digging it. Since Disney bought Marvel, it all feels pretty empty and inorganic to me.

With Rebirth DC feels closer to where it was before. Post-Flashpoint DC was mixed but not bad, though I prefer the pre-Flashpoint and hopefully Rebirth we'll be seeing.

I'm highly enjoying, more than ever in fact, Valiant in it's current version. Best Valiant ever, better than the originals or Acclaim versions. Great tight continuity and characters that make sense. Going to be getting into Archie's Dark Circle as well, as that looks pretty good.

Rebirth has been pretty rock solid so far

The only stuff I care about right now from Marvel is Moon Knight, Punisher and the Daredevil/Punisher mini.

Marvel is making changes just for the sake of making changes at this point. If you're introducing this Riri girl, why not have her as some kind of understudy of Tony's with a name like 'Iron Maiden' or something?

This kind of stuff isn't bringing in new readers. Kids/teenagers who like the Iron Man and Avengers movies and want to delve into the comics want to read about Tony Stark as Iron Man one would assume.

I have no problem with legacy heroes... I love Kyle Rayner and Wally West (I've always found Hal and Barry boring).. Rhodey in the Iron Man suit was good.

What I don't like if forcing things for the sake of change... like Sam Wilson as Cap WHILE Steve Rogers is stilla round. He's a good hero in his own right, he doesn't need to be Captain America... it's simple diversity pandering. It would be a far more interesting story to have the kid from Young Avengers try to be Cap, or have a new character.

With Riri.. she seems like she could be a fun character (if a little generic at this point). Why can't she be a character in her own right, instead of Iron Man? (I know the answer is marketing, it just pissed me off).

To be honest, Tony Stark (who I love, btw... easily my favorite comic character ever) might need some time in Marvel limbo/death/whatever. They took a great genious inventor character who changed with the times (he went from mostly working with the government in the 60s, to being the ultimate businessman in the 70s and 80s, to being a enterpreneur/inventor in the 90s) really well. I remember when they first had him into the goverment in the late 90s as Secretary of Defense, I thought it was great.. seemed like a logical step in the evolution of the character. Throw in his alcoholism as his flaw and he was just massively interesting.

Then we get the Crossing, the reboot, and Civil War, and Tony was suddenly overly selfish, neurotic, and insecure. He's gone from the person everyone wants to be to the person everyone wants to hate. He needs some time and a writer who gets him.. so maybe Riri will work out, but I nope they establish some reason for it.

I like comics to tell one continuing story in a believable way. Sometimes that means making important changes along the way, and sometimes abruptly. Some of these changes may be successful (the new X-Men), some of them less so (the Mutant Massacre), but they feel sort of organic. Any replacement that seems dictated by an editorial agenda usually grates my nerves, same as any plot twist.

Even when it's well done, replacing a hero by someone else is not something I'd consider unless the ground has been prepared for a very long time, because a hero is not a costume and a code-name. A hero is an individual. When reading the adventures of Captain America as a kid, I wanted to know what happened to Steve Rogers, not to his uniform and shield. When he dumped his costume and became the Nomad, and even if I knew that it was probably just temporary, it is Steve's adventures I wanted to follow; not those of whoever put on the red white and blue.

Replacing Tony by Rhodey as Iron Man, replacing Steve by Bucky as Captain America, those were two changes that made sense... but they were changes suggested to be temporary right from the start. Had it been otherwise, we readers would have been asked to care for characters who are not the ones who drew us to the mag initially. When Rhodey was Iron Man, I read the mag not to see how the armour would beat up a villain; I read it to see how Tony would beat his alcoholism.

Having a newcomer be Iron Man for a while doesn't bother me one bit, unless someone at Marvel looks us straight in the eyes and goes all disingenuous again ("As far as we are concerned, this is the new Iron Man, period, we have no plan to bring back Tony stark"). Even then I wouldn't mind the temporary switch, but the dishonest attitude. If the young Iron Maiden is there to further the life story of Tony Stark, everything's cool even if she is the one wearing the armour. But the book should be about Tony.

Regarding supporting characters replacing the main one :

I like Amadeus Cho as himself, a genius-level sidekick to brawny heroes. I like Jane Foster as herself, a cookie cutter superhero girlfriend fleshed out as an individual. I like Sam Wilson as the Falcon, the hero whose great legacy he created. I like Bucky as himself, and the evolution he went through under Brubaker's pen shows that it is quite possible to allow these people to grow and develop; there's just no imperative need to turn them into their mentor/associate. Because then we lose two good characters; the original hero, who was the initial draw to the book, and the cool supporting character, who is no longer unique.

Passing the mantle can work, but the book must then be about a legacy, not an individual. That's why it's so much easier to change the roster of super-teams than the hero of a solo book; not only can we keep a few of the old gang around during the transition, but a team book is usually more about a concept, an idea, than about the individuals that are on it. In a solo book, we must first make the replacement more interesting than the original for any transition to work at all, and that's a pretty tall order!