Just thought of something.
Without D&D, fantasy video games would have taken trends from kids fantasies that were popular in the 80s and early 90s.
Stuff like HeMan, Thundercats, She-Ra, Thundarr. Or like Saint Seiya and Power Rangers.
So
- The videogame side of fantasy would be a lot more scientific than 1e. Final Fantasy's Black Belt might be replaced with a Technician who has gadgets.
- The Paladin might be replaced with a Destined Warriors who is destined or granted a magic weapon as a class feature. Getting the Sword of omens, Sunsword, Excalibur, Sword of Grayskull, Sword of Protection, Mjolnir, or some other artifact weapon at level 5. Possiblity with a transformation.
- Theere would be a D&D equivalent of an Archmages as a guy it's the Evil Sword of Death or Blade of Chaos!!.
So yeah the party would have a player transforming into a HeMan or She-Ra while his buddy lobs grenades at the blue dragon.
I mean, it’s still be a fantasy rpg, and it would be influenced by LoTR and the fantasy movies of the 80’s just as much as the cartoons like Thundercats.
So, yes, more science fantasy than current D&D, but definitely not just primarily those cartoons as an influence, and very little comic books, and anime but only fantasy anime, plus a very strong influence from LOTR and other fantasy series, as well as stuff like Legend, Princess Bride, The Last Unicorn, Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Neverending Story, David The Gnome, Narnia, plus a strong influence of modern problems like climate change leading to more wilderness and heroes of the wilds.
I’d expect races like Dryads and Satyrs, magical nature with sentient animals, much less human-centric, no focus on dungeons at all, more mytho-historically accurate folk lore races like trolls that resemble mythical trolls, plus more playable monsters out of the gate, from werewolves and vampires to trolls/ogres and goblins and other dangerous Fey.
The nature guy class would def be very magical, but I think your ideas of heavy comic book influence here just don’t ring true.
And much less hard line between magic and not magic than folks in the D&D community often want.