Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue at random, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

Secret Invasion has finally kicked off, and if we’re to believe the hype, Bendis has had it in the works as far back as Secret War and Avengers Disassembled. Not too shabby, and if true, represents long-term planning that would impress even the writers of Lost.

With this in mind, I thought it’d be a good idea to use this week’s Dusting Off to go back and have a look at the place where Bendis claims he explicitly started identifying Skrull infiltrators to Tom Brevoort – the first arc of New Avengers, and give ourselves a refresher course. After all, the cover to Secret Invasion #1 is a homage to the cover of New Avengers #1. There’s got to be some link, right?

In the first issue, someone hires Electro to break out a bunch of prisoners from the Raft, and a group of heroes who are visiting the Sentry get caught in the midst. During the battle, over 40 villains escape, but a similar number are held back by the assembled heroes. As a result, they accidentally form what Captain America calls the “new” Avengers – Iron Man, Cap, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Luke Cage and later, the Sentry, with Wolverine joining a few issues later.

As an opening issue, it’s a fairly simple, iconic story of heroes overcoming the odds, and that’s what makes Captain America decide to re-form the Avengers team. However, we now know that the issue, and the rest of the arc, have Skrulls in it, pulling the strings. All will certainly be revealed in time, but for those of us who can’t wait, let’s see what we can figure out…

The most obvious wildcard in this story is the shadowy man in a trenchcoat that hires Electro to break into the Raft. To this day, we don’t know who it was. However, in that opening scene, Electro has some very deep, obvious green eyes. That’s been shorthand for “this person is a skrull” for some time. Is Electro one of the earliest confirmed skrulls? He’s done little of prominence recently, but that does suggest that the people freeing Lykos are Skrulls, and therefore you could assume the shadowy figure is too.

Thing is… that shadowy figure does look a lot like Nick Fury, from what we see of him. It’d also explain why we haven’t seen who it is even 3 years down the line – Fury’s still in hiding. There’s more going on it that it seems, of course. If it is Fury who hired Electro, he did so to break out Sauron, which pointed the New Avengers in the direction of SHIELD’s questionable activities in the Savage Land – something Fury would want to do now that he’s on the outs with the organisation. Maria Hill destroyed the SHIELD unit mining Savage Land Vibranium when the Avengers found out. If that shadowy figure is Fury, then all this also points to Maria Hill being a skrull – not an unpopular or particularly original theory, but one that, on re-reading New Avengers’ opening arc, could have some weight behind it.

Yikes. Two possible contradictory theories and we’re only one issue in. The clues allegedly start New Avengers #1, so why not have a read and see what you can find out?