Justice League International #19 – “No More Mr. Nice Guy” – Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis/Kevin Maguire/Joe Rubinstein
Last issue, Lobo accepted a contract from Manga Khan to kill the Justice League members who were following Khan to get Mr. Miracle back. Lobo attacked them but Big Barda zapped him across the galaxy … right to the JLI Embassy in New York. Lobo’s sudden appearance knocked Guy Gardner back into his old asshole self—yes. Guy’s an arrogant prick again—and he went after Lobo. The two of them brawl in the streets, attracting a lot of media attention
until Booster Gold encases Guy in his force-field until he passes out from lack of oxygen. They invite Lobo in and when he finds out where he is, he figures he can wait there for the rest of the League to return and wipe them all out at once to fulfill his contract with Manga Khan. Lobo pretends he was trying to help Barda and the others find Mr. Miracle, so Max Lord offers him provisionary membership in the League, since they’ve been a little short of personnel lately (especially since Black Canary has just tendered her 
resignation). Green Flame and Icemaiden officially change their names to Fire and Ice and Ice tries to connect with Guy, who she seems to have a thing for. But she got interested in the sweet, lovable Guy, not the asshole he is now, so she’s a little confused. In the spirit of recruiting new members, some of the team go out to ask specific heroes to join up. Superman says he can’t commit full time, Booster and Beetle don’t even get to see the Flash (although they do get an earful from his mom), and Captain Atom has to talk Max out of offering membership to Major Force. Batman does manage to talk
Hawkman into joining, with a little help from Hawkwoman, who’s eager to be on the team. Hawkman is written as being very dour, with no sense of humour whatsoever, which will become a running joke in the book (and like most of the running jokes, it gets old really fast). Meanwhile, across the galaxy, Big Barda realizes where Khan will take her husband and warps the ship straight to Apokolips.
Young All-Stars #18 – “Thule” – Roy and Dann Thomas/Ron Harris/Malcolm Jones III
This one starts with the Young All-Stars heading north (without Wildcat, who has some contrived reason for not being there) to find their teammate Neptune Perkins, who went with the Dzyan named Kalla to help his grandfather … who’s apparently both Arthur Gordon Pym and Captain Nemo, but now goes by Argor. Argor was captured by Nazis, who want three things from him: the gold he stole when he sank the Titanic; the mobile island known as Leviathan; and the secret of Vril, a mental power that would allow the Nazis to take over the
world. Unfortunately, Neptune was betrayed by Kalla last issue, who made a deal with the Nazis to save Argor (who she loves) because he’s starting to revert to his true age after decades of using Vril to retard his aging. But nobody warned Kalla not to trust Nazis, so they shot her and dumped her body into the sea. Colonel Streicher and Dr. Thule are torturing Neptune to force Argor to reveal the secret of mastering Vril, but Argor knows he can’t let them have that power. Besides, it’s taking all of Argor’s Vril power just to keep himself alive. He apologizes for getting Neptune involved, and for the deaths of his parents, 
since the Nazis killed them while looking for Argor. Thule goes off on a rant about the pseudo-scientific World Ice Theory of Hans Horbiger, with a little Hollow Earth bullshit thrown in for good measure. (Although since Skartaris exists, I guess the Hollow Earth thing might be true in the DC Universe.) Thule tells them how he tricked Kalla into getting Argor to waste his Vril power, making it easy for the Nazis to beat the Dzyan. While Thule has been talking, he’s been draining Argor’s Vril power into a machine and he now gets in to absorb the power for himself. The machine explodes, but Thule emerges overflowing with Vril power and finds he can now command the Dzyan. The Young All-Stars show up and Thule sends the Dzyan to fight them. The All-Stars
pound the Nazis, but find the Dzyan to be tougher opponents. Flying Fox gets through to the lab, but is no match for Thule’s Vril powers and the others are soon captured by the Dzyan. Outside, Kalla’s body has floated away and comes near an ice floe, where we see she’s not dead after all, just injured. She crawls out of the icy water and finds someone standing over her. He introduces himself as Victor Frankenstein. No, not the scientist … the monster he created.
I really like the Hawkman running joke, THIS Katar is such a humorless
but to each his own! curmudgeonlyy @$$hole always harping about the “good old days” I find it hilarious. He’s so dour even Batman can get humorous licks in (obviously this is before Bruce had his sense of humour surgically removed sometime in the Nineties). It’s fun because it’s linked to the Hawkman characterization from the seventies JLA. Alas, the later ludicrous retcon had it that this WASN’T Hawkman or Hawkgirl and they had never been members of the Justice League pre-Crisis post-Crisis if you see what I mean.
Boy, Roy Thomas’s Young All-Stars was pretty misbegotten, far inferior to either All-Star Squadron or Infinity, Inc. at their best; just a mess of continuity implants and a splurge of annoying metatextual Wold Newtonian references. Plus, “Iron” Munro (Iron Mun?!) was no kind of replacement for Superman, Roy the Boy should have left well enough alone. Young All-Stars saw all of his worst tendencies (hardly absent from A-S.S.) run riot. A pity
Yeah, I was expecting more from the Wold-Newton stuff, since it seems like an interesting idea … at least, in theory. The “dour Hawkman” joke is funny at first, but ends up getting run into the ground (which you could say about a lot of the jokes in this version of the Justice League). I guess I prefer my humour a bit more subtle; there was some great wordplay on JLI over the years.