I hope not.

Seriously? Why not?

I also hope he's not back, he's shit.

I dont think he is.

Not sure why 2 of the above people dont wont him back. He was good artist. I didnt approve of the designs he made for MK3, but he's responsible for the most popular characters in MK....so yeah, I'd like to see him back.

P.S Oh yeah Neatherrealm Studios, don't forget to put John Tobias's name under the "special thanks to" category under credits.

What designs you didn't like?

I actually liked MK3/UMK3/MKT character designs.

Stryker. Putting a cop in the mk universe was very odd at the time. Also, I was never a big fan of the robotsthat were introduced but that grew on me over the years. I didnt like modern-day urban enviornemnts looking back now.

The overall art direction was just a drastic move I thought. It lost that MK1-MK2 touch.

I guess you're kinda' right. Stryker... But I really liked the cyber ninjas and the modern-day urban enviornments.

If he did more MK comics, I would read the hell out of them.

But I think Vogel proved himself a better storyline plotter and writer for the games when he did DA and Deception. They were just much richer in detail.

What???? MK 1-3 is John Tobias. He created most of the characters YOU love. Give him some props. He's the o-r-i-g-i-n-a-l mind behind MK.

And I hate Stryker too, but i rather have him then any of the new characters introduced in the 3D games. They were completely uninspiring IMO. Vampires, dragon king? eh...That's not the Mortal Kombat I grew up with! I'm happy Ed is carrying on tradition, but he needs to rethink his strategy.

I didn't say Tobias was bad. I will give him plenty of "props".

I just said Vogel took what Tobias created and did cooler stuff with it.

Tobias did a great job with MK1-MK2, but after that he got stale, adn ran out of good ideas IMO. MK was cool because of it's ancient feel, monks, priests, y'know, that kind of stuff, but come MK3, you've got robots, modern day cops, Bride of Frankenstein, and some of the environments, they didn't belong.

And the comics, OH GOD, the comics, I couldn't stand the third person talk "Tell Shao Kahn what you know" "Reptile is sorry!" It was beyond stupid. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for MK to be back into comics (was talking about it with other fans, alternate earth in the DCU maybe?) But I want Tobias to stay away from it.

besides, Vogel changed it up in a good way, introducing more villains, a wider story (despite its fuck ups) I'd stick with him

While I do feel that those characters you mentioned were very uninspiring, I'd much rather see Kenshi, Hotaru, or Havik back instead of Stryker.

However, I would rather see Stryker back than the two characters that you mentioned above.

I was under the impression that Tobias created the story and characters for MK's 1 through 4. Is that right? Or was it just MK3?

Regardless, I like his character designs for MK1 and MK2. Kabal was great, and so were Quan Chi and Fujin. The rest of the MK3 and MK4 cast stunk in my mind.

I still hate the cyber ninjas, the village people (NIghtwolf and Stryker), the bride of frankenstein, etc.

But he did have a track record back in the day, so if I were lead on the MK team, I'd at least want to hear his ideas on some new characters, even if I wouldn't overly see the necessity in bringing him in for the story aspect of the game.

Of course, I do think that the earlier MK games had a aura of mystery to them. The "it's believed he traveled to Outworld alone" and the "this is usually the sign of opposing clans" type of things that are subtle and added the sort of undercurrent that made the characters more interesting back then without throwing a Metal Gear Solid's worth of story at you.

So yeah, if Tobias had ideas, I'd at least listen either way, but that's just me.

Yeah, he left midway through MKSF along with a good protion of the team, which is why that game was a disaster, he was gone by 4

Tobias didn't write any of the terrible Malibu series.

The only thing he wrote and drew two special mail order-only comics, one for MK1 and one for MK2. They're canonical prequels to the start of each game's tournament.

You got it right the first time, he was the writer and lead character designer for all of the first four games and Mythologies.

Tobias = Badass. id welcome him back.

I honestly thought Onaga, Drahmin and a few others were much better designs than Nightwolf, Stryker, Cyber Ninjas.

It's always hard to say who did what, especially when it comes to character design. All I really know is that the character concepts seemed strong with Tobias's reign while the storyline was superior under Vogel's presence.

Im pretty sure Steve Beran had a heavy influence or responsible for the whole idea of the Cyber ninjas. In the Sektor trading card he sais he was enspired by one of his favourate star wars characters. Thats obveously Boba Fett.

I dont think its either Boon, John or Vogel, alot fo them came form multiple places, il bet you The cyber ninjas were mostly Steve and John.

I personally prefer Vogel over Tobias.
I have nothing against Tobias, I just feel that his stories were too simple. Vogel's stories seem more detailed, and more interesting to me.

Yeah, Beran is a huge Star Wars nerd. The Cyberninjas and Kabal were mostly his idea. I've seen interviews with him where his desk is cluttered with action figures of like Boba Fett and such.
And they've said in the past that when it comes to thinking up names for the characters, they usually get together around a table, throw out ideas, and vote on them. So there is a team effort aspect to creating most, if not all of the characters.

But Tobias was the head designer, and he drew all the concept designs and the final art that you see in the strategy guides.

Ed was asked this a few months ago on Twitter and stated that he was not working with John Tobias and hasn't since he left the team. I'm thinking WB contracted Tobias to do the artwork, and that it wasn't Midway (or the MK team) that requested his services.

Tobias did at least visit the Midway offices and catch up with the team while he was working on the comic, though. There's a video on the kollector's edition disk where Vogel talks about how great it was to talk MK with him again and get his opinion on the stuff they've done with the characters since he left.
And I'm certain I've read or heard Ed say somewhere that he and Tobias are still friends and have lunch together once in a while and stuff like that.

Of course, what he may have meant to say was he hadn't "worked with" Tobias, meaning he hadn't worked on the games with him. If all he did was draw the comic art for MKvs.DCU, that probably doesn't really count as "working on the game" which is what he was answering, I believe.