He might look like a regular dog (albeit one wearing a spacesuit), but Cosmo is no ordinary canine. This remnant from the Soviet Space Program is a telepath who “speaks” with a Russian accent and emits telekinetic blasts. He protects the Celestial space station, Knowhere, and is a faithful friend to the Guardians of the Galaxy, occasionally joining them on missions.
Soviet Spacedog
Cosmo is a Golden Retriever-Labrador mix dog. How he came to the space station Knowhere, the apparent “last place in creation” housed inside the decapitated head of a Celestial at the edge of the universe, is unrevealed. He is a relic of the Soviet space exploration program who got lost in orbit sometime in the early sixties. How Cosmo possesses psionic powers, heightened intelligence, and the ability to talk as well as an unrevealed lengthened lifespan.
At some point after arriving on Knowhere, Cosmo becomes its chief of security. His first job is to always use his powers as needed to help keep order among the many visitors coming to Knowhere so they can study the end of the universe from a safe place.
Phenomenal Psionic Powers
Cosmo has psionic abilities, including both telepathy and telekinetic powers. While the upper limits of these abilities are unrevealed, he uses his telepathy to read minds, even eavesdropping on conversations between Richard Rider, AKA Nova, and the Worldmind when it was housed in Nova’s head.
Cosmo can telekinetically throw several people across a room at once, even stunning them when needed. He can create psychic shields wide enough to block a corridor and strong enough to deflect energy blasts.
In addition to having the heightened senses of a normal dog, Cosmo has access to all of Knowhere’s technology and information resources when he needs it.
Ruff and Tumble
Cosmo takes his job as Knowhere’s chief of security seriously by using his powers against those who would do it and the people there harm, including protecting all of the people on it from the Luminals when their archenemy, the gigantic mystic-powered Abyss, started mind-controlling people. He also protects the pacifist Skrulls from the Skrull jihad and even the Guardians of the Galaxy (until Cosmo told them the whole story).
While Adam Warlock, AKA Magus, is a friend to Cosmo, his evil side goes up against Cosmo and the Guardians. Magus fake kills them so he can turn them into slaves, but Cosmo and the Guardians break free and attack Magus.
A Dog’s Best Friends
While performing his duties on Knowhere, Cosmo meets Nova, the last of the Nova Corps, and the pair become friends when they team up to keep the station safe. This friendship eventually leads Cosmo to cross paths with Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, and the other Guardians of the Galaxy. Cosmo also offers assistance to the Guardians, acting as their liaison on Knowhere and joining them on missions.
Though they eventually became friends, Cosmo and Rocket Raccoon, AKA Rocket, were somewhat wary of each other in the Guardians’ early days as a team. When Cosmo asks why Rocket is always so hostile towards him, Rocket replies that he can’t shake the feeling that Cosmo was about to chase him up a tree.
Cosmo’s Cosmic Travels
When the Luminals, the super-powered global protectors of the planet Xarth Three, secretly brought their archenemy, Abyss, to Knowhere to cast him out into the edge of the universe to finally be rid of him, they instead unleashed terror on Knowhere. Imprisoned in a coffin-like box, Abyss managed to free just enough of himself to begin taking over the minds of Knowhere’s citizens. Tracking Abyss’ energy readings to the Xarthian sector (though not yet aware who was causing them), Cosmo confronted the head Luminal, Saen Sadak, AKA Cynosure, over what was inside the box, but Cynosure arrogantly denied anything wrong. Unable to legally search the sector on suspicion alone, Cosmo left Cynosure with a stern warning that further trouble would get them kicked off Knowhere.
When Abyss caused deadly mass hallucinations and turned some of the citizens into zombie-like “meat puppets” as his defenders, Cosmo ordered an emergency lockdown and got everyone he could to safety inside a Dimensional Envelope housed within a tesseracted storage crystal on his collar. Searching again for the cause of the hauntings, Cosmo instead found the recently arrived Nova and the Xandarian Worldmind, whose mission to find a means of freeing the Kree Empire of a Phalanx invasion had landed them there. Cosmo informed Nova of the killings, giving the Worldmind enough information to suspect Abyss’ existence.
Now with a main suspect, Cosmo and Nova entered the Xarthian sector to find Abyss, only to realize Abyss had turned the Luminals into his zombie puppets. Cosmo fought off the zombies long enough for Nova to repair Abyss’ prison, containing him once more and allowing Knowhere to return to normal. In gratitude, Cosmo used Knowhere’s main teleportation center, the Continuum Cortex, to plot a course to the planet Kvch, long-lost homeworld of both the Phalanx and their creators, the Technarch. In return, Nova left Cosmo with a parting gift of a chewy bone, which Cosmo gleefully accepted.
Later, when Peter Quill, AKA Star-Lord, formed a new Guardians of the Galaxy team, Cosmo permitted them to make their base on Knowhere, allowing them access to the Core Continuum’s teleportation facilities.
Cosmo also allowed a group of pacifist Skrulls, followers of the martyr Princess Anelle, to use Knowhere as a destination to escape the militaristic jihad the Skrull government was mounting. To keep from betraying them, Cosmo had the Skrulls wipe his mind after each run through the Cortex, so he could truly say he knew nothing about them. However, when an agent of the Skrull jihad found the railroad and tried to shut it down he succeeded only in damaging the Cortex and leaving the bodies of some dead Skrulls, officially alerting Knowhere’s citizens to their presence.
When Knowhere’s Administrative Council began investigating the disruptions the Guardian’s presence on the station brought, Cosmo was given no choice but to temporarily confine them to quarters until things with the alleged Skrull invasion were settled. While Cosmo went to have his memory restored, Guardians member Drax used brain synapse disruptor charges to temporarily “kill” everyone on board Knowhere to flush out the Skrulls (since Skrulls revert to their true form after dying). Cosmo was forced to defend the pacifist Skrulls against the Guardians and a new team of Luminals before he was able to reveal the truth to them.
Cosmo and the Guardians soon found themselves drawn into a war between the Kree Empire and the Shi’ar Imperium, whose superweapons threatened to destroy the already weakened fabric of space. Cosmo aided Mantis and Heather Douglas, AKA Moondragon, in their unsuccessful efforts to convince both sides to stop the so-called “war of kings”, and even formed a temporary alliance with the intergalactic pirates known as the Starjammers to no avail. Cosmo was forced to fight both sides when they inadvertently allowed the Shi’ar Imperial Guard and Kree rulers, the Inhuman royal family, onto Knowhere.
A time-displaced Starhawk transported Cosmo and several Guardians to her future reality-669116 where they learned a dimensional rift created by the current conflict had destroyed the universe. Cosmo got a warning to Guardians member Adam Warlock via the Celestial head, allowing Warlock to keep the rift from widening further, but at the cost of allowing his evil side, the Magus, freedom. Making their way back to their own time, Cosmo and the Guardians confronted the Magus, who faked killing Cosmo and several other Guardians so he could remake them as servants, but they broke free and attacked the Magus instead.
