Robert Kelly (comics)
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- For the rapper named Robert Kelly, see R. Kelly.
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Robert Kelly is a fictional character in the Marvel Comics universe. He most often appears in Marvel's X-Men and X-Men-related comic books. He is a prominent United States Senator who began his career on an anti-mutant platform, and as the X-Men team is made up entirely of mutants, his role tends to be that of an antagonist. The character was created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne in Uncanny X-Men #135 (July 1980).
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[edit] In comic books
Senator Robert Kelly was first seen at a social gathering hosted by the Hellfire Club. He was the primary backer of the Mutant Control Act and Project: Wideawake, a government program aimed at creating updated Sentinel robots that would help track down and, if necessary, detain or kill violent mutants.
He played a central role in the Days of Future Past storyline that took place in Uncanny X-Men #141-142 (January-February 1981). The entire plot revolved around the X-Men stopping Mystique and her Brotherhood of Evil Mutants from assassinating Kelly and thus inadvertently causing a dystopian future.
When he appeared in Uncanny X-Men #246 (July 1989), he had married Sharon, a former maid who worked in the Hellfire Club. Sharon Kelly was killed the next issue, in Uncanny X-Men #247 (August 1989), by the Master Mold. This further incited his stance against mutantkind.
Kelly remained an active anti-mutant activist in the comics through the 1990s, but slowly became more open-minded and tolerant towards the mutant population, promising the X-Men he would work for the rights of mutants during the early 2000s. After his life was saved by the mutant Pyro, Kelly vowed to reconsider his standing on mutants and work towards improving human/mutant relations. Ironically, he was not long afterwards assassinated by a militant anti-mutant activist, furious that Kelly had betrayed their cause.
[edit] Trivia
The fictional name of the character Robert Kelly was chosen by Chris Claremont in honour of his Bard College professor, the poet Robert Kelly (1935-). The latter has confirmed the coincidence between the two names in interviews among his students.
[edit] In film and television
Kelly had prominent roles also in both the first X-Men motion picture (2000) and in both of the X-Men animated television series. In the film, Kelly, played by Bruce Davison, is staunchly anti-mutant. He is kidnapped by Magneto and subjected to a process that transforms him into a mutant. Unknown to all, the process is ultimately fatal, and Kelly, now in an amphibian-like form, dies in the custody of the X-Men. He was subsequently impersonated by Mystique in X2.
In the X-Men animated series, which ran on Fox from 1992-1998, Kelly ran for president on an anti-mutant campaign during the beginning of the show's first season. Kelly came to befriend the X-Men and support mutants shortly after his election as president, in the season's final episode, after the X-Men had rescued him from both an assassination attempt by Mystique and an attempted brainwashing by Master Mold. In the first episode of season two, Kelly took office as president, spoke out in support of mutants, and made his first presidential act an official pardoning of Beast, who had been unfairly arrested early in season one. These actions led Kelly's former, anti-mutant supporters to feel betrayed by him and create the public anti-mutant backlash that pervaded the entire second season of the show. In the third through fifth seasons of the animated series, President Kelly had a low profile. He remained friendly with the X-Men through the show's end, working with them to confront global mutant threats such as Magneto's building an armed, inhabitable, mutants-only asteroid in space during the fourth season. In the cartoons his voice was done by Len Carlson.
In X-Men Evolution, Kelly (renamed Edward Kelly) was the principal of Bayville High, the school that several X-Men attended, and harbored anti-mutant opinions. He was not a powerful antagonist, although he was running for Mayor in the series' final season.
In all three major media adaptations of the X-Men (the X-Men film, the X-Men animated television series, and the X-Men comic books), Mystique has impersonated Kelly to suit her own needs and has attempted to kill him at some point.
[edit] In other media
Senator Kelly appears as an NPC character in the RPG video game Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.
