Captain Strange, an only child born to wealthy parents 1925. Orphaned in 1931 due to an unfortunate accident at sea in which his father Monsieur Marcus Dupont, part owner of the steam fleet Dupont et Dupont, disappeared in high waters off a notoriously treacherous stretch of coast, east of Maputo near the southern tip of Mozambique.
A few months later his mother Madeleine Dupont, owner of the renowned patisserie Dupont’s, regarded highly for its Russian black bread, could no longer endure the agony of having lost her one true love. One night she went to bed, tears swelling in her bloodshot eyes, never to walk upon the earth again. The doctor pronounced that she had died of acute indigestion, but most people knew that she had died of a broken heart.
For the Captain, known at this time as Professor Ratbone, life would never be the same. He was promptly packed off to Wales to become acquainted with his uncle Fredrick Dupont. Having preferred to stay at home fulfilling the more administrative aspects of the business, Fredrick had always left his more adventurous brother in charge of travel and research. As a result of this attitude, he felt he was in some was responsible for Marcus’ demise and believed it was therefore his responsibility to take a duty of care over the professor.
As his heartache slowly surrendered itself to more attractive pursuits, there arose in the young Ratbone a physically powerful lust for a certain young lady named Cordele Swank. They would have been in their early teens when they consummated their passion for one another under the old oak in the cemetery at Saint Smithy’s of Barnstable. The Captain has always said of this moment; “It was then that my eyes opened and I realised I was in fact being from another planet incapable of lateral thought.†No one ever really knew what he was talking about.
In 1942 the Professor was shipped off to North Africa to do his bit in the fight against the scourge of National Socialism. It was here that he developed quite a reputation for himself as a gung-ho Jack the lad and was rapidly promoted to the esteemed position of Captain.
Unfortunately in 1943 the Captain was no longer fully in control of his faculties as he had acquired a taste for eating sand and licking oil from the bottom of the supply truck’s carburettors. One night he awoke in a violent sweat and ran naked into the desert screaming for his parents. He never returned. They used to say of that moment: “That was the night fruitcake Ratbone turned strange.†So from that instant he was no longer known as Captain Ratbone the renegade barbarian swashbuckling sand-junkie, for he had become instead the legend that was, and is, and forever shall be… Captain Strange.