Very good questions, and I wonder about them myself. It seems to me like Hasbro is taking the usual "villains don't sell" mentality with this line or something, and trying to get as many different Iron Men out there as possible. I realize he's the main character but he's not the only one. Most of my local stores are flooded with Iron Man variants, those same variants they keep repacking in every subsequent case. I had hoped the stuff would start moving after the movie came out but they seem to be going slowly. I was in the store the other day and saw a family there complaining about how there was nothing but Iron Men on the pegs and no bad guys. Their kid wanted someone for Iron Man to fight.
I think the first wave was solid for the most part. The marks 1-3 and Iron Monger, and a few of the concept armors, sort of a sneak preview wave. Good, makes sense. Then wave 2 came along, Mark 4, 5, War Machine and 2 different Mark 6's, and a ton of repack figures. Whiplash should have been in this wave as well, and maybe a drone as well. Did we really need 3 different red armored Iron Man that are barely any different in the same wave? And it might be more if they repacked the Mark 3 in this wave too, I'm not sure if they did or not. Having all those similar armors in the same wave is just excessive.
For the record though I'm rather happy with the comic series line.