The first character I ever became obsessed with was Captain Hook.Article continues after advertisement
I couldn’t have been more than three or four, though I was already weird; I saw the 1953 Disney version of Peter Pan and immediately fell in love in only the way that tiny children can. I read the cardboard-backed children’s book story over and over, until the binding disintegrated. The copy I had was the adaptation by mystery writer Mary V. Carey, titled Peter Pan and Captain Hook. For most of my early childhood I believed this was the true and proper name of the story, which the film had truncated for simplicity’s sake. This made perfect sense to me, since Captain Hook, as the primary villain, deserved equal billing, and was at least as important as the protagonist.
The bewildered adults in my life often asked me why I liked Captain Hook so much. I couldn’t articulate it very well; I just liked him. He was fascinating, and held my attention the way the other characters didn’t. He was also the first character I remember being curious about outside the confines of the story of Peter Pan, what his life as a pirate had been like before he came to Neverland, what the daily business of running a pirate ship would have been like, what his relationship was to members of his crew. I wanted to know more than the story had given me.
