D&D Killed the Fantasy Star

Devil’s Due Publishing announced this week that they’re buying the rights to develop comics based on the various Dungeons and Dragons worlds. My first reaction to this news was a sarcastic, “Well, that’s surprising.” After all, the company’s made its name on licensed properties like G.I. Joe and Voltron. Getting a D&D license is business as usual for these guys.

The snideness comes from observing an ugly trend in genre publishing. Going for the certain sell, book publishers would rather license a line of Star Trek or Star Wars novels than take a chance on trying to find the next Robert J. Sawyer. Why spend time looking for one, new Lois McMaster Bujold when you can publish a zillion Dungeons and Dragons novels this year? It’s good business. People want more Star Wars and D&D. They also want more Ashton Kutcher movies and Miss Congeniality sequels though, so what do they know? Screw art. Screw originality.

In all fairness, Devil’s Due is branching into original material with their Aftermath line. It’s a superhero line, so “original” is a relative term, but you gotta give them credit for at least coming up with new characters. And let’s not forget that Dark Horse, one of the most diverse publishers around, got its start licensing Terminator and Robocop comics before it branched out into other things. If managed wisely, it can be an effective way to start a viable publishing company.

Is acquiring a D&D license wise though? This property doesn’t have a great history with the comics medium. In a recent article on Newsarama, Devil’s Due publisher Josh Blaylock says, “There is a huge potential for these books, and an enormous fan following. Unbeknownst to many, D&D is bigger now than it's ever been, and these characters are just as popular as well.” From the proliferation of D&D material in my local comics/gaming shop, he’s probably right. But a lot of gamers don’t necessarily translate into comics readers. You’d think they would, but Knights of the Dinner Table and Dork Tower aren’t exactly topping the charts every month. Any month, for that matter.

DC and Marvel have both had turns trying to make profitable D&D comics. DC got thirty-something issues each out of an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons series and a Dragonlance series. They managed twenty-five issues and an annual of a Forgotten Realms book and kept their Gammauraders and Spelljammers series going for about a year each. Not bad actually. Marvel published a Dragon Strike special and called it quits.

Kenzer & Company had more success with the property than Marvel and got out a few D&D mini-series before losing the license. When they got the license, President David Kenzer said, “We anticipate our new Dungeons and Dragons comics will be huge.” Sounds familiar.

Maybe this time will be different, but maybe gamers just aren’t that interested in marrying their love of role-playing to their love of comics. If Joe Gamer has three bucks in his pocket to spend on comics, is he going to plop it down on the latest X-Men and continue his uninterrupted run on that title or spend it on a book set in a world he’s going to get to actually visit this weekend with his buddies over pizza? I guess we’ll see. Keep in mind though, that Devil’s Due’s initial offerings are all adaptations of previously published novels. If all goes well, they plan to start publishing original stories with these characters, but that’s a big If. Our Joe Gamer’s decision just got easier because now he’s already read the story in the D&D comic.

I’m not trying to be Cassandra here. I don’t wish Devil’s Due or any other publisher bad luck. If they manage to introduce just one person to comics, good for them. What I do wish though is that they’d spend the time and money developing an original fantasy comic that actually offers something new to the industry. It’s riskier, but like any risk, the rewards are far and away greater than those achieved by the easy path. Still, I take deep breaths and remind myself of Dark Horse.

Then again, Devil’s Due is the company that’s going to make followers of the Legend of Huma mini-series buy the first five issues all over again in trade paperback form just to get the sixth and final issue, which will only be published in the trade. That's just sleazy, anyway you slice it.