Heartwarming: Marvel Creates Superhero To Encourage Hearing-Impaired Boy To Wear His Hearing Aid
Four year-old Anthony Smith suffers from hearing loss and has to wear a blue hearing aid (Blue?! MAKE IT FLESH TONE). The only problem is he doesn't like wearing his hearing aid because none of the superheroes in comics do. Enter Anthony's concerned mother, stage left. No -- the OTHER stage left. "That's stage right." Theater's so confusing, I bet that's why movies are way more popular.
Desperate for help, Anthony's mother Christina D'Allesandro wrote to Marvel, hoping to discover a superhero that proved him wrong - and that's where the man with the bow, arrows and penchant for purple clothing comes in (Maya Lopez a.k.a. Echo is another hearing-impaired character in Marvel's stable of heroes, although unlike Hawkeye, she is completely deaf and wouldn't benefit from a hearing aid).
Marvel was even nice enough to create some original artwork of Anthony and Hawkeye, and, TA-DA, now Anthony doesn't mind wearing his hearing aid. Good lookin', Marvel, but where were you when, I dunno, I HAD TO WEAR HEADGEAR TO MIDDLE SCHOOL FOR A YEAR? Where was Headgear Boy, huh? You wanna know where Heargear Boy was? I'll tell you -- crying himself to sleep every night ON HIS BACK even though he HATES SLEEPING ON HIS BACK but had to because if he didn't his smile would end up crooked. *sobbing* Somebody hold me.
Hit the jump for another picture Marvel made.
Thanks to Cliff, bandorz and Katie, who heard a mother with a son with a clubfoot wrote DC Comics and DC wrote back telling her to just stop buying their comics. Harsh!
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