Comic Title: Secret Origins #48
Publisher: DC (DC Comics Inc.)
Address: 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Cover Date: April 1990
On Sale Date: February 20, 1990 Shipping Date February 20, 1990
Source: Previews, #12

Shipping Date February 20, 1990
Source: Amazing Heroes, #176

Shipping Date February 22, 1990
Source: Advance Comics, #14

Direct Market Date February 22, 1990
Source: Comic Shop News, #139

Copyright Date February 20, 1990
Source: Library of Congress, Copyright Office 1990

Frequency: Bi-monthly
Cover Price: $1.75
Page Count: 48
Editor: Mark Waid

Title: "We Thought Him Up"
Pages: 15

Feature(s):
Ambush Bug (Post-Crisis)

Plotter/Penciller: Keith Giffen
Scripter: Robert Loren Fleming
Inker: Robert Lewis
Letterer: John Costanza
Colorist: Anthony Tollin

Reprinted In:
Showcase Presents Ambush Bug TPB (2009)
DC Through the '80s:The Experiments HC (2021)

Feature Character(s)

• Ambush Bug (last appearance in Invasion #2; next appearance in Ambush Bug Nothing Special #1)

Supporting Character(s)

• Cheeks (reincarnated as the director of the N.B.O.; first post-Crisis appearance; no further appearances)

Villain(s)

• Several N.B.O. agents (no further appearances)

Guest Appearance(s)

• Vril Dox (last appearance in L.E.G.I.O.N. '90 #13; next appearance in L.E.G.I.O.N. '90 #14)
• Lords of Order (last appearance in Justice League Europe #8; next appearance in Doctor Fate #20)

Other Character(s)

• Freddie (Dox's agent; no further appearances)
• A nurse at the Home for Forgotten Cartoon Characters (no further appearances)
• Several employees of Heaven (no further appearances)
• Jeff and his associate (gangsters; no further appearances)

Synopsis:
Ambush Bug is approached by agents from the National Bureau of Origins. They demand that he reveal his origin. To motivate him, one of the agents shows the Bug a picture of Cheeks, who is lost. Ambush Bug begins providing the N.B.O. with origins stolen from other characters while he searches for Cheeks. As part of the search he gets a Lord of Order to kill him and send him to Heaven. The Bug is sent back to Earth in a new identity which gets the N.B.O. to back off. The Bug does not find Cheeks who is acting as the N.B.O. director.