The story goes like this: Christina Smith, mother of 4 year old Anthony, was having trouble convincing her son to wear his “Blue Ear,” a hearing aid he wears on his left ear to help him hear after having masoaic trisomy 22, a rare genetic disorder which has left him completely deaf in his right ear and mostly deaf in the left. The reason he really didn’t want to wear it? Because, as Christina puts it in a letter to editor Bill Rosemann, “super heroes do not wear blue ears.”
So what did Marvel do? They made the Blue Ear, a new hearing-impared superhero named after Anthony Smith. Illustrated by Nelson Ribiero, the piece of art was created specifically for Anthony to show him that superheroes are really just like him and hopefully foster enough inspiration for Anthony to wear his hearing aid device. As Nelson wrote on Marvel.com’s blog:
I was so moved by the story, there was no way I WASN’T going to draw something! As I was reading Anthony’s story, the name for his device just kept sticking out to me. “Blue Ear.” It just sounded like a super hero name. All that was missing was the, “The” in front of it. So I went home and drew out a few sketches of what “The Blue Ear” would look like. From the story, I knew Anthony didn’t want to wear his device, so I wanted to make sure that The Blue Ear’s listening device was very prominent and very important to his ability as a super hero. I even tried to write all the captions in a way which would focus on how important it is for the Blue Ear to wear his device. Hopefully, Anthony would also realize how important it is for him to wear it everyday as well!
Isn’t that a nice little heartwarming story for your Friday afternoon?
