We’ve got comic book movies making lots of money. We’ve got newly designated gay superheroes making headlines. But there’s one comic-book related tale that you may not have heard. And personally I think this is the super one.
It all starts with a 4-year-old boy named Anthony who lives in New Hampshire. This little fella was born with a genetic disorder that left him deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other. So he was given a fancy blue hearing aid to help him out. One day, however, the superhero-loving kid sat up and said that his hearing-aid-wearing days were over. After all, his favorite superheroes never wore them, so he wasn’t going to either. And that was that!
Of course, this didn’t sit too well with his mom. But no matter how she tried, Anthony refused to don “blue ear”—which was the nickname they had given his blue hearing device. Mom, being a mom and thus a superhero in her own right, leapt into action. She emailed the gang at Marvel Comics and asked if there was any chance that there was some super-duper out there who wore a hearing aid. And what do you know, they responded with some good news: The arrow-slinging Hawkeye is a hearing aid wearer after losing 80 percent of his hearing. They even sent Mom an image of the hero with his aids in place.
But that’s not all, my derring-do readers. The super guys at Marvel even created some drawings of Anthony with Hawkeye. And they whipped up a new hero-type guy called Blue Ear who uses his distinctive supersonic listening device to scope out evil-doings wherever they may be. In the drawing, Blue Ear exclaims, “Thanks to my listening device, I hear someone in trouble,” in response to an otherwise inaudible cry for help. In fact, his heroic hearing device lets him hear “an ant hiccup on the other side of the country,” Nelson Ribeiro, Blue Ear’s co-creator, told CBS News.
Well, as you might imagine, those Marvel(ous) guys and gals saved the day. Young Anthony was so happy and encouraged, in fact, that he took all the drawings to show his pals at school—a place for special needs kids. And the whole school started flying high, proclaiming a week of superhero activities, inspiring the kids to not let their handicaps hold them back. Did Anthony go back to wearing his hearing aids? You bet. And he told a local news agency that his new plan was to use what he had “to fight bad guys and help people.”
To tell the truth, I’ve always been a DC comics guy. But the Marvel gang just won a fan in me. Bravo.
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