The hell?

In January's New Avengers: Illuminati #5, written by Brian Michael Bendis and Brian Reed, Tony "Iron Man" Stark convenes a meeting of the so-called Illuminati, the power-brokers who run the Marvel Universe's hero community behind the scenes. Among the group is Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards.

Stark shows the group the corpse of a Skrull that was posing as Elektra, and discusses the fact that it was completely undetectable. Richards suggests they perform an autopsy to figure out how the Skrull was able to mask its presence.





After some talk and a battle with some new Super-Skrulls, the allies realize they can't be sure any of them isn't also a Skrull, and Reed suggests they not only not work together on the Skrull threat, but not even talk to each other about it.







In April's Secret Invasion #1, also written by Brian Michael Bendis, Stark calls together Hank Pym and Richards and shares with them both a "secret": A Skrull has impersonated Elektra, and the Skrull was able to mask its presence. He'd like Richards and Pym to perform an autopsy to figure out how it accomplished this:








So, question time.

Obviously, in these sorts of big stories that spread across so many different titles by so many different creators, wires are occasionally crossed and story glitches arise. But usually that happens in books by two different writers, and a little farther along than the very first issue.

Did Bendis simply forget the issue he'd written a few months previously, and write the script for Secret Invasion in a way that didn't account for it?

Or is this an indication that the Stark and Richards in Illuminati #5 are supposed to be Skrulls? Or that the Stark in Richards in SI suspect the Pym there to be a Skrull and are trying to draw him out?

This is one aspect of this storyline that threatens to make the it more irritating than entertaining—any mistakes or bad writing can be blamed on a story point that likely won't be revealed until the story's just about over.