Topic: Robert Kelly

Robert Edward 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. However, towards the latter days of his career, he began to change his views on mutants as a whole. The character was created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne and makes his first appearance in Uncanny X-Men #135 (July 1980).

Senator Robert Kelly was first seen at a social gathering hosted by the Hellfire Club, where an illusion projected by the mutant villain Mastermind caused him to believe he had witnessed the X-Man Cyclops firing randomly into a crowd. 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 Senator Kelly and thus inadvertently causing a dystopian future where mutants and other heroes were hunted down and nearly totally eliminated.