That's exactly how I feel. The trouble started when Quesada got it into his head that the "best" and most "innovative" inde-writers would necessarily be the best fit for mainstream superhero comics. I think Alan Moore is the best writer ever to grace comics, but I have zero faith that he could do an extended run on Fantastic Four or Thor and it be as good as Byrne's and Simonson's without completely changing the concept (like Swamp Thing) or doing a deconstruction (not really what I'm looking for in a mainstream book). The only viable talents, from my perspectives, and in terms of Marvel and DC, are writers like Mark Waid and Kurt Busiek. I've enjoyed virtually everything they've done at Marvel and DC and have always felt that their work was a perfect balance of the old and the new.

It's okay, I didn't read it.

I definitely don't care what the plan is with Secret Wars. These MAJOR EVENTS always lead to me quitting reading comics for awhile.

I care ONLY to the extent of if my favorite Marvel characters disappear or not.
They've already killed off Namor and a lot of their MAJOR characters, so!
I guess my only other interest is to see if they keep the X-Men around, you know, AS the X-Men.

If the X-Men were gonna get dumped they would have done it already. The X-Franchise accounts for too much of Marvel's publishing revenue.

What I believe we will see is the same thing we got with Crisis back in 1986: Details change, backstories are altered and there are some major overhaulings to lesser characters but we'll still have all of the characters. At this point Marvel history has gone more or less unaltered since 1961. There were a few hazy years in the 90s but even the One More Day retcon just changed one minor detail in Spider-Man's history, with the same stories all having happened. This is the first time Marvel is opening themselves up to getting rid of most or all of it, including the niggling little things that have been shaky for years. These are my guesses for some of the changes they'll make.

1) World War II/Vietnam/Gulf War/War on Terror are mostly replaced with fictional conflicts so Iron Man, The Punisher, Flash Thompson and other characters tied to real life events no longer have to play catchup.

2) Radiation-based origins are traded in for genetic engineering and other, more modern sciences. This is something the Ultimate line used for Spider-Man and Hulk (and possibly others) and I think this will be one of the major ideas brought over from the Ultimate Universe

3) Cold War themes and characters will be removed on the basis of being beyond obsolete. From 1961 to 1989 there was a lot of Cold War gunk built up that can finally be cleared out.

4) The Avengers were founded by Nick Fury/SHIELD. Again running along with the movies and the Ultimate Universe.

If Marvel were really brave they would start over completely, right from the beginning with Peter being bitten by the spider, Banner getting irradiated, Cap being unfrozen, etc. Completely rebooting an entire superhero line and starting from square one has never been done. All three of DC's reboots have been partial, while The Ultimate line was very small in scale and was done with the intent of being subversive and modern. A company wide wiping of the slate and start from scratch is unheard of and would be an incredibly bold move providing the most perfect jumping on point possible (I can't think that theres no one at Disney who doesn't think this would help close the gap between comic sales and movie revenue).

The problem with true a line-wide "hard reset" that starts everyone at square one is that it prevents them from being able to use their full roster of characters, particularly ones that tied to having an established history. I think one of the main reasons why the new 52 didn't completely reset everything is because they would have gotten rid of a long list of characters that are too important to their line. Just using Batman as an example -- if Batman were starting at year one again, then there's no Robin, no Nightwing, no Batgirl, Batwoman, Batwing, etc. etc.

I think Secret Wars is Marvel's way of having their cake and eating it too as far as rebooting. For years, they've said that their continuity doesn't need fixing and have taken thinly veiled jabs at DC for their periodic reboots. And they aren't entirely incorrect, insofar that their long-standing history is one of the things that sets them apart from DC. On the other hand, they've had a taste of the reboot Kool-Aid through their increasingly frequent relaunches, and they know that things like this generate sales. I think they also recognize that, attachment to history notwithstanding, there are plenty of messy corners in the Marvel U and a reboot would a perfect opportunity to clean those up without being accused of massive retcons.

So Secret Wars is their solution. Since it will likely preserve certain definitive, character-defining moments, they can market it as not being a true reboot, but rather a cherry-picking from the best of Marvel and Ultimate Marvel continuities. On the other hand, it lets them introduce a ton of changes that are effective retcons, but technically aren't because this is a new universe. And there's no reason to keep Ultimate Marvel around anymore since a reboot of the main Marvel U negates the reason for having a separate Ultimate Marvel line in the first place.

The thing I find to be amusing about all this is that DC's Convergence seems to be doing something pretty similar, in that they've strongly hinted at pre-new 52 characters and concepts returning to their publishing line post-Convergence, and at nearly the same time as Marvel.  The big two have copied ideas from each other in the past, but this is seriously on a new level.