Yes, 1 million was picked by Aaron just because he thinks it sounds cool. It becomes enormously difficult to mesh with continuity though, but he’s never cared about that. According to Thor #293, there was a Ragnarok cycle 2,000 years ago, and so current Odin was “born” then and Thor some time after. Even if the Eye of Odin’s story is untrustworthy, were Thor older than 2,000 years, he would have recognized the error within the story outright. Furthermore, it was this very story arc that culminated in the reveal that Gaea is Thor’s mother, which is being reinforced now.
Yeah, DC is godawful these days. Hickman, even with his faults, would have brought a lot more substance to DC, which is just a mess after their gazillion soft reboots. Hickman seemed about to start the second half of his giant X-Men arc before Marvel interfered and started a holding pattern to milk all of Hickman's ideas using other writers. That's not a good idea as Hickman's most notable flaw is that his stories are almost too big and take too long to tell, and other writers make the entire story less coherent. (That said, I have liked Duggan's work on the main X-Men title.)
America Chavez is a good character, but you’re right, Marvel doesn’t know what to do with her. Marvel shouldn’t try to shoehorn Carol into being their female powerhouse unless she’s in Binary mode all the time, there’s already too much continuity that puts her on a lower tier than Thor, Silver Surfer, and Hulk. Same with She-Hulk. It will be difficult to overcome that previously established perception. It should not be that hard though to create a powerhouse woman from scratch and establish her on the top power tier where no Marvel females seem to reside currently.
I hope not. Marvel, please put Ewing, Gillen, or Hickman on Thor.