This is "How Can I Explain?", which is a feature spotlighting inexplicable comic book plots.
Reader Bill G. wrote in to ask (a number of years ago, but hey, I was waiting for an answer and it never came), "How and when did Bug from the Micronauts become the human sized character we now know in Starlord-Annihilation Conquest? Did this happen duirng the Peter David run on Captain Marvel? "
When Marvel launched the Micronauts (by Bill Mantlo, Michael Golden and Joe Rubinstein), Bug was one of the few characters (along with the lead character, Commander Rann, and Marionette) who were not officially based on action figures and thus Marvel owned the rights to those characters...
Thus, when the sequel Micronauts series, Micronauts: The New Voyages, ended in the mid-1980s with #20 (by Peter B. Gillis, Kelley Jones and Danny Bulanadi), in an issue where it seems like all of the Micronauts might have sacrificed their lives to save the Microverse (or not - it was a bit vague on what ultimately happened to the Microanuts after they sacrificed themselves. They might have been reborn)...
Some of the Micronauts were Marvel's to use. So a decade later, in Cable #38 (by Jeph Loeb, Ian Churchill and Vince Russell), Marvel decided to bring back the ones that they owned as the Micronauts, still in the Microverse...
Marvel then discovered that the company couldn't use the name Micronauts. So they kept the same group of heroes, they just used other names, like Microns or Champions of the Microverse or whatever (even the Microverse would ultimately become something that Marvel could not technically use, so new names were developed).
Bug even got his own one-shot by Todd Dezago, Derec Aucoin, Rich Faber and Ralph Cabrera), where he fought Annihilus through time and space...
These heroes showed up in Alpha Flight (by Steve Seagle, Anthony Winn and Aaron Sowd)...
They showed up in Captain Marvel (by Peter David, ChrisCross and Anibal Rodriguez)...
Then, well, things changed...
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After a few years, Bug then popped up in Annihilation: Conquest- Starlord #1 (by Keith Giffen, Timothy Green III and Victor Olazaba) in a Kree prison without any explanation for why he was now out of the Microverse...
Bug worked with Star-Lord and the other heroes all throughout Annihilation: Conquest.
Later, Bug even joined the Guardians of the Galaxy in Guardians of the Galaxy #7 (by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Paul Pelletier and Rick Magyar)...
He served with the Guardians for the next couple of years.
Finally, in the miniseries, Incredible Hulks: Enigma Force #1 (by Scott Reed, Miguel Munera and Greg Adams), Bug returns home to the Microverse to join back up with his old Micron friends...
And that's it. We never actually learn how/why Bug ended up in the regular universe.
Sorry, Bill!
If anyone else can think of a good inexplicable comic book plot, write me at brianc@cbr.com!