Mercurius
Legend
What jumped out at me was the phrase:
That's interesting as comics are at the heart of Disney's Marvel strategy as they mine the comics for characters, ideas, and storylines.
However, they do so in a way that offers almost zero support to the comics themselves.
The comics are mostly left on their own, struggling to make ends meet and continually having to reboot or pull events and stunts to maintain their dwindling fanbase and expected sales numbers. Meanwhile, the companies put restrictions on the books, like not creating any new mutant characters in the XBooks to avoid giving Fox more characters they can work with for those movies. And even ending the Fantastic Four comic to avoid giving the movie tie-in support (which suggests the people in charge don't know the comic business that well, as the comics have always relied on the movies to drive demand for the comics and boost sales...)
The comics are at the heart of Marvel but they're really there for nostalgia purposes as they no longer generate money or fans. They're the heart, but it's this weird vestigial heart.
I all but walked away from reading comic, getting two books from the Big Two (both Vertigo and ending soon) and have mostly moved onto Image. Comparing D&D to Marvel comics isn't reassuring to me...
There's a big difference, though, between comics and D&D. Comics have a distinct timeline while D&D is "timeless." Sure, specific settings have a kind of canonical timeline, but not only do you not have to use them, but it is accepted and understand that everyone's own individual version--as the DM--is "canonical" to their own game. So if some big studio comes out with a D&D movie and kills off Drizzt (we can only hope), it isn't like it is conflicting with Realms canon or any of the thousands of Realms campaigns going on, and WotC couldn't have to change anything or account for anything.
We don't all have our own individual versions of what happens in the Marvel universe. It is an ongoing story, a "perennial myth," that we get to enjoy. But with roleplaying games, it is more that there are infinite universes, with the published canonical one being default but not absolute. I think that sort of implied understanding would make creating D&D movies a lot easier and less problematic.