I'm with Trash on this one - MK needs a reboot. Every time we're told that the next MK will be something Earth-shattering, Ed and Company get gun shy and bring things back to where they started. MK3 was a fairly significant step in a different direction - Cyberninjas, No Scorpion, Different looks for returning characters - and two upgrades later, we received MK Trilogy, supposedly the final hurrah for the original MK storyline. MK4 did the same thing - supposedly a new start, but one upgrade later, we received MK Gold and more returning characters. MKDA has Shang Tsung snapping Liu Kang's neck, only to see Liu return in MKD, and only to see everyone return in MKA. Any attempt at depth is retconned, any successful progress in storyline / character development seems to be accidental.
I tried asking this before and no seemed to care, but can't hurt to try again: What makes Mortal Kombat "Mortal Kombat"? How do you define MK? Is it the finishing moves? We've seen other games with finishing moves, alot of them on par with MK's fatalities, so I'm gonna say it isn't the Fatalities. Is it the blood? Same thing - we've seen other games with blood. Best I can figure, it's the characters, the "Existance Is In Trouble" storyline that seems to be in every game, and some derivative of the MK3 engine. That said, if MK has been run into the ground, it isn't because of DC Comics; it's because Midway hasn't done anything *really* different with MK in some time.