Omnitron feels as out-of-place to me in Silver Gulch as he does in the Realm of Discord, or as Chairman does in most environments other than Rook City or Pike Industrial (Megalopolis isn't too much of a stretch, and I figure he can be reskinned for Silver Gulch, Final Wasteland, or even Mars, but in Atlantis, Insula, Discord or Anubis, he just feels weird). I don't have this problem with most villains, someone like The Matriarch or Warlord Voss can be imagined cropping up just about anywhere, but these are two examples of villains that seem to bring a theme with them, and I find them out-of-place against the wrong backdrop. This is part of why I never randomize my games; I like to make them seem holistically fitting, and in solo games I often extend this to the choice of heroes.
Well, if you're a fan of comic books, you'll know that the most ridiculous things can happen with almost no explanation other than "time portal" or "science". I see no problem with Omnitron rampaging through an old western town; perhaps it sent itself back in time in order to murder the descendent of some key figure who helps lead an anti-machine resistance in the future, Terminator style. Or the Chairman deciding to become the ruler of Atlantis and resurrect it to power in order to expand his empire beyond Rook City and eventually be able to overwhelm Megalopolis (what else are evil minded, rich people going to do with their time?)
I think any scenario can be explained; some are borderline crazy, yes, but a little imagination can make a fun theme out of it.
Yes, when the comic books in question are very badly written. I don't accept it as an inevitable genre convention that all comics MUST be ridiculous, let alone that they OUGHT TO be. A good writer does NOT just throw all sorts of crap at the wall and see what sticks; a good writer recognizes that sometimes one theme clashes with another, and that they can't and shouldn't be combined without investing serious effort in making it work. With a properly constructed justification, it can work…I created such a thing when I tried to imagine Chairman in the Final Wasteland, and reimagined him as the dictatorial overlord of the last surviving human settlement, whose word is law because the alternative is death by cryptid. But trying to put him in Insula Primalis under a similar rationale just doesn't work as well, IMO. Perhaps a better writer than I could make it succeed brilliantly, but I can't see it; to me it's just a kind of silly combination that doesn't really work.
I see no problem with Omnitron rampaging through an old western town; perhaps it sent itself back in time in order to murder the descendent of some key figure who helps lead an anti-machine resistance in the future, Terminator style.
It strains my credulity to think that the four gunslingers (counting Sherrif Pratt) of SG would react exactly the same to Omnitron as they would to, say, Plague Rat. One is FAR more outlandish in such a setting than the other, even if neither one quite belongs. Omnitron is a building-sized metal monstrosity who nobody could possibly ignore, while Plague Rat could easily be mistaken for a man in a mask, and could hide out in the desert or skulk through the shadows of town. The Plague Rat story needs a little duct-tape to hold it together; the Omnitron story is like a three-lane traffic bridge built out of popsickle sticks and Elmer's Glue, which I wouldn't trust my weight to for a second.
Or the Chairman deciding to become the ruler of Atlantis and resurrect it to power in order to expand his empire
Not quite as much of a stretch…this is the beginnings of a decent rationale, but it needs some work. Remember, the power of Atlantis is three cards in the deck (Font of Power, Pillars of Hercules, and two Phosporescent Chambers); the Kraken and Mystical Weaponry together are just as much of a factor, and Collapsing Hallways, Leaking Rooms, and Toxic Seaweed make up the rest. (If the room isn't leaking, then why exactly is Toxic Seaweed a problem?) So how does the Chairman keep the Corrupt Cops on his payroll when the Kraken keeps eating them? How does Prison Break even apply when the heroes and villains are miles from civilization? I am happier not having to ask these sorts of questions; it is a rare game when none of them at all spring up, but I'd at least like to keep them to a minimum.
I think any scenario can be explained; some are borderline crazy, yes, but a little imagination can make a fun theme out of it.
As a thesis, I don't disagree with this at all. The issue is just with the borderlines and the definition of "little"; my numbers are a bit different than yours. Measure twice, cut once.
If we make Omnitron be an alien AI, there is no reason to imagine he wouldn't have attacked during the Wild West days.
If we move the entire premise into a more Firefly-esque setting, the idea of sic-fi technology interacting with cowboys is even less far-fetched...
Hm. Okay, that works. Good job.
Goes to show, Firefly is the winning answer to everything.
Yes. Yes it it. 
There's also Doctor Who...which has had aliens in a Wild-West-style town and dinosaurs on a Spaceship, amongst other things :D.
That hardly counts, Dr. Who has everything in it. "Unity of theme" is not really a thing for that show…it's not unlike the comics in that regard, but this regard is very much what I think comics need to stop being like, so that they can be taken as seriously as they deserve to be.
Having a ship that can go anywhere in time and space makes these things a lot easier to explain than whatever shenanigans holds comics together, though :P
Also different genres of comics have different levels of seriousness and such, some are made to be silly, others aren't. Comics started off more comical and silly, thus why they are called comics, sometimes refered to as The Funnies or The Funny Papers when refering to comics in a newspaper.
Sentinels has a hairdryer that gets brought to life with cute little eyes and a squeaky voice, a vicious mechanical raptor called Mr Chomps (and friends), a huge Maori warrior guy who has just the biggest, happiest grin ever whilst smashing up robots, a horrible villainous villain of villainousness who in one incarnation has the title "Maniacal Death-Ray Wielder" (or something along those lines), and a dispute over the fact that Bee Bot is technically a hornet but "Bee Bot" sounds better. And a load of other stuff.
So no, I wouldn't say it's a particularly serious comic for the most part. Yeah, it has its serious side (Iron Legacy's story, for example), but there is plenty of fun and silliness in there to balance it out. There's also a million Shout Outs to many, many things - Omni-10 even references Doctor Who in one of his fluff quotes, making a comment about "reversing the polarity" (can't remember which card, though).
A graphic novel is just that - a novel shown in graphical form. Text-only novels can range from silly to serious and back again, so why not the ones which tell most of their stories via pictures?
But we're not talking about just random unrelated stories, we're talking about a giant shared universe. There aren't very many of those in novel form, and I lack the patience to read very much of the ones that are (one of the reasons I love comics is that I can get through them a lot faster than text-only books). Given such a medium, the whole thing is essentially one giant book, and so it ought to have a coherent theme and take itself with a consistent amount of seriousness, don't you think? If sometimes it builds tension, but other times it goofs off and fails to respect its own rules, that strikes me as poisoning the well. If you're reading the Lord of the Rings, you don't suddenly see Saruman go down to the bar to have a couple of beers and joke around with his buddies; it would be completely off-tone. The books work because they make a conscious decision to function on a certain level, and they stick to it. Why can't the Marvel or DC universe manage the same? Why does Batman's existence run the gamut from Bane breaking his back and leaving him convalescent for months, to Bat-Mite driving him crazy with reality-altering pranks? Probably because different writers, with different styles, are all cooking the same soup, and adding too many ingredients that don't go together.
I don't know why, but the reason I can't get into comics is that I can't take a story seriously if it has more than very occasional pictures. Pictures put me in lazy passive mode, a bit like TV, and that's somehow not as much fun as if I'm having to "work" by reading a text-based book.
I mostly dislike movies based on book I've previously read for similar reasons - the pictures in my head are generally better, so I'm usually disappointed with the visions of the director. Things look and sound wrong.
Fun Fact: that episode of Doctor Who where Matt Smith visits an old west town is the same set used in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
Not disagreeing with you, but usually there is something to say about testing out different things in a certain style of story. It's like being a chef: you never know if two different flavors taste good together until you try them out, Like a chocolate covered pretzel.
It's also all personal tastes. There's something unique about a super-serious character having to deal with a reality bending prankster, could open up a whole realm of possibilities.
Anywho, to each their own. But if the powers that be want a little bit of silly in their serious super-hero soup, then who are we to say they are wrong?
I actually kind of like comic books BECAUSE their serial nature allows them to change tones and showcase the writer's perspective and personality while still maintaining the overall theme. Of course, I am not a huge comic book reader so I can't really attest to how well any particular line of comics has kept well over decades and decades of publication... but for me I like being able to see the story from different angles and seeing what each writer/artist brings to the a character's universe.
Now I don't always like the changes a particular writer or artist may have done to character I enjoy... but I like that he/she was able to do so.
Since we're on the subject, I do agree with Envisioner to the extent that long running comics (Superman, Batman, Fantastic Four, ect.) are dying under the weight of their contunuity, and some of it has to do with massive shifts in tone, but these tended to happen over decades. I mean, to use tv/movies, the Adam West batman just simply cannot be the same Batman as Christopher Nolan's Dark Night, but they were also from periods of time that are what? 40 years apart?
What I really want to see in mainstream comics is the same thing I try to find in webcomics (and could potentially get from Sentinels of the Multiverse comics) a self-contained, interesting story which does not have 1,000 back issues for me to slog through, with some of them being accepted canon and others.... "overlooked"
I know the big names are big money makers even today, but we need to start writing new stories, stories that actually end instead of going on ad infitnitum, or the medium isn't going to become the best it can be. In my humble opinion of course.
I agree with Silverleaf on the not-tending-to-like-film-adaptations-of-books thing - I like to envision the characters and locations in my own way, and then I'll see a film of it and go "aww noo, they did it wrong :(", obviously "wrong" in this sense meaning "they didn't do it the way I picture it". Plus they tend to move stuff around, add/remove stuff, and generally make it not much like the book. A film adaptation of a book can still be okay/good in its own right, just not when viewed in comparison to the book (saw the latest Hobbit film the other day…).
I'm not into graphic novels, I've never really developed any kind of interest in them. I'm not even that interested in the whole superhero genre in general, really - it just happens that Sentinels is such an epic game I can make do with it not being set within my favourite genre (though ain't it funny how my favourite hero to play has ended up being the one I can msot closely relate to a Fantasy class?) ;). Then again, it still has aspects of Fantasy, as it does many other genres - Infernal Relics is basically the "magic" expansion and funnily enough contains most of my favourite stuff :).
That's what also makes comics so hard for newcomers to get into. A lot of the biggest characters in comics have been around since at least the 30's. When someone who doesn't know a thing about comics (but is kind of interested after seeing the latest Superman movie) walks into a comic book store for the first time, where is he/she supposed to begin? The problem with comics is that they have no "beginning" point for people to start with. Sure, the employees and forum users can suggest certain story arcs they should try out, but even then, some of the jargon can be so soaked in its own continuity and backstory that it simply turns the reader off before they can get into the good stuff.
So I agree, it'd be nice to see comics start fresh stories and actually finish them (though I doubt we'll see that from DC or Marvel, considering hooking a reader base on a character is how they make their money, and that leads to pushing out as many issues as they can). Continuity is both the best and worst thing about comic books. I love knowing that all the stories I read and characters I love are linked together in this big chain of events within a contained universe. A lot of it, however, has simply gotten out of hand, creating a massive problem for getting new readers into comics.
Bringing this back to Sentinels; I'd be excited to see SotM printed in a physical form. I'd buy the hell out of that. And I applaud >G for stating (somewhat officially) that Sentinels is going to stop with the 6th expansion (Tactics, however, is a different story). That shows that they have an end in mind and are willing to create just the right amount of content instead of pushing the series as far as they can until it falls off a cliff. And I'm sure they'd do the same with the comics; start and end them in a commendable fashion.