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Robert Kelly (Earth-616)

From Marvel Database

Character Template Help
Real Name
Robert Edward Kelly
Current Alias

Aliases
Bob

Identity

Alignment


Relatives
Sharon (wife, deceased)

Universe

Base Of Operations

Characteristics
Gender

Height


Eyes

Hair

Unusual Features
Hair graying at temples

Status
Citizenship

Marital Status

Occupation
U.S. Senator from Massachusetts seeking the presidency at the time of his death

Origin
Origin

Place of Birth

Place of Death

First appearance
Appearance of Death

History

As member of the U.S. Senate, Robert Kelly long regarded the growing number of mutants as a threat to national security. To cope with this supposed danger, he promoted legislation such as the Mutant Registration Act, requiring those with powers of genetic origin to disclose their abilities to the government. This proposal prompted the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to attempt to assassinate Kelly in Washington, D.C. The Brotherhood did not succeed, thanks to the intervention of the X-Men.

Contents


The failed assassination attempt fueled the Senator's resolve to pass the Registration Act. He cultivated a partnership with industrialist Sebastian Shaw, who built mutant-hunting Sentinels and supported Kelly's plans. Unbeknownst to the Senator, Shaw was a mutant and the Black King of the Hellfire Club. Following one of his meetings with Shaw in New York, the Senator's limousine was demolished by debris from a fight involving the X-Men. Kelly survived -- but his wife, Sharon, died in the wreckage. Kelly's grief strengthened his position that mutants were too dangerous to be allowed to run rampant, and he ordered the production of more Sentinels.

Kelly supported "Operation: Zero Tolerance" until he realized the android known as Bastion, programmed to exterminate mutants, was using the program to convert innocent humans into Sentinels and trampling on the rights of U.S. citizens. When he withdrew his support, the Senator became one of the Sentinels' targets. To save his life, he called on the X-Men and wielded his political influence to enlist the worldwide intelligence and peacekeeping organization S.H.I.E.L.D. to shut down Bastion. His political views unaffected by the experience, Kelly declared his candidacy for president on an anti-mutant platform.

To ensure his safety against another assassination attempt by the Brotherhood, the Senator accepted Professor Charles Xavier's offer of assistance and added the X-Men's Cable to his personal security team. As the evil mutant Post maneuvered toward Kelly at a rally in Boston, former Brotherhood member Pyro used the final manifestation of his powers to kill the assassin and save Kelly's life. Pyro's selfless act finally prompted the Senator to re-evaluate his stance on mutants.

Ironically, an anti-mutant activist named Alan Lewis believed the Senator betrayed the anti-mutant cause by toning down his rhetoric and assassinated him when he was speaking at a college rally despite him being guarded by Cable.

Powers and Abilities

Abilities

Kelly was a persuasive public speaker.

Strength level

Normal human male with moderate regular exercise.

Paraphernalia

Transportation

Conventional automobiles.

Trivia

  • The fictional name of the character Robert Kelly was chosen by Chris Claremont in honor of his Bard College professor, the poet Robert Kelly. The latter has confirmed the coincidence between the two names in interviews among his students.

Appearances in Other Media

Films

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 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.

Television

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.

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