As a person who uses science to both sustain his heart and battle evil, Iron Man is a superhero that knows full well how beneficial technology can be, so it made sense that he'd be the newest hero to team-up with the hearing-impaired super hero Blue Ear, who similarly uses his hearing aid to make the world a better place.

Created in a few months back in response to four-year-old Anthony Smith's assumption that "superheroes don't wear hearing aids," the Blue Ear has previously teamed up with Hawkeye, another hearing-impaired superhero, to encourage Anthony to wear his hearing aid. Now, he's teamed up with the Armored Avenger too, as Iron Man made a real-life guest appearance at a special event at the Center for Hearing and Communication honoring Smith and Marvel's collaboration on a new comic poster.Written by Christos Gage and drawn by Paco Medina, the new poster depicts Iron Man intervening in a bullying incident on Ethan, a hearing-impaired boy. When a group of boys refuse to play soccer with Ethan, Iron Man explains that a hearing aid is just a piece of technology that betters a person's life, just like his armor.

The poster was created in collaboration with Phonak, a major hearing-aid distributor, after they learned about how the Blue Ear had inspired Smith to wear his own blue hearing aid.

"When Christina [D'Allesandro, Anthony's mother] told us about Anthony, she taught us about some of the unique challenges that children who wear hearing aids face. When our friends at Phonak heard about how the Marvel heroes helped him, they realized how together we could help spread the message even further," said Marvel editor Bill Rosemann at Marvel.com.

You can read the full poster below.


[Via Marvel]

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