Trying to think of what other comic book character has that trait. Green Lantern? Turok (which seriously needs its own proper live action film because its got dinosaurs and aliens in it, and as we know, both can be great fun.) Not sure who else. Maybe that other shite character who Black Panther reminds me of for some reason. Billy Zane.
The Phantom, Ghost Who Walks, a classic Australian comic book superhero, is a mantle passed from generation to generation. Not the most well known character, but I guess that's what the Billy Zane reference is about?
DC have a long track record of replacing heroes. When they relaunched their line in the late 50s, they had new versions of Green Lantern, The Flash and several others. Later they handed both titles to other characters. The Flash mantle passed on after Crisis on Infinite Earths to former Kid Flash Wally West. There have also been various Robins. The Knightfall storyline saw a new Batman at around the same time four new Supermen took over while Clark Kent was believed to be dead.
Marvel did something similar in the 80s, with Jim "War Machine" Rhodes becoming Iron Man, and several replacement Captains America when Steve Rogers was disillusioned with America and briefly became Nomad. The same era had Beta Ray Bill lift Thor's hammer and Rick Jones was the Hulk for a while, too.
Rumour had it they were worried about losing the rights to the characters, as they were facing potential legal actions from some of the original artists and they thought having different people portray those heroes would be a useful standby, or to show that the heroes were not simply what had been created in the 60s, but could be anyone in the guise.
Although they reinstated the original heroes, it became quite common for new versions of most of their big names to crop up from time to time. There was the Eric Masterson Thor, who would later go by the name Thunderstrike, and numerous Spider-Man clones, with the angle there being that Spidey had actually been the clone Ben Reilly all along. (After writing themselves into a complete corner, they backed out of it and retconned the whole thing.)
Then there was the new, younger Nova, who is quite a big deal now. There have been four or five Captain Marvels, too, and I even hear they have a new Quasar, which is the third one of them.
So the new Iron Man, Spidey, Thor, Hulk and so on are really just the latest in a long line of replacements.
