Originally Posted by
Adekis
I couldn't keep reading when I saw what Bendis did to Cosmic Boy.
Basically, Rokk Krinn classically is from a very impoverished background. His homeworld, Braal, has been going through a massive economic depression for years. Rokk's got a way out though, which is that he's a great athlete. Magno-Ball is like Braal's soccer, meaning anyone can play it, because everyone has magnetic powers. Rokk is such a great Magno-Ball player, it's his hope to lift his family out of poverty! So he goes to Earth to try and get success there - despite the fact that Magno-Ball is basically a game that only has a presence on Braal, because, well, only Braalians can play it. That's how basically desperate he is before he meets RJ Brande. He's looking for sports sponsorships on a planet that doesn't play his sport - because it's still better odds than trying on Braal, that's how poor Braal is. And through luck and hard work and an unexpected new opportunity as a founding member of the Legion, Rokk not only manages to lift his family out of poverty, but to improve Braal's standing overall!
In my opinion, to take a character so enmeshed in class struggle and to make him an elite, to strip away the egalitarian nature of Magno-Ball by making it so that only 1% of Braalians have magnetic powers, to literally make Rokk Krinn "one of the one percent", is an absolute disgrace to the name of Cosmic Boy!
So after the issue that started with a flashback to Cos' backstory, I stopped reading the book. Before that, I was... still skeptical, to be honest, but I was pushing through it. It wasn't bad, there were things I liked about it. Cosmic Boy just happens to be one of my favorites. I guess I didn't even realize how much until Bendis changed him from the ground up.
As for whether other versions of the Legion have that teenage hormonal instability or not - I honestly think they all do, except the ones where the Legion is adults. Even in the Silver Age, they've got a Silver Age version of that - remember that their first appearance involves hazing Superboy just to be dicks, basically. I think that's pretty real. Bendis is just good at believable dialogue for that kind of character, it doesn't mean they've never had that perspective before.