Most children, at some point or another, dream of becoming a superhero. Sometimes those children are 36, live in their parents’ basements and still wear Spiderman footie pajamas, but anyway. Like any other kid, 4-year-old Anthony Smith loves the Marvel Comics heroes, but Smith, who is hard of hearing, wouldn’t wear his blue ear hearing aid because “superheroes didn’t wear them,” his mother used her Spidey sense to write to the Marvel team asking if that was true. They responded in the most awesome way possible.

Not only did the department reach into the archives to find that indeed, Avengers member Hawkeye did suffer hearing loss back in the ‘80s, but they turned Smith himself into a superhero, getting the name from his device, the Blue Ear. In their version, Blue Ear is Hawkeye’s partner-in-heroism who uses his listening device to hear for people who are in trouble. So, to conclude, superheroes do, in fact, occasionally wear hearing aids, and I’m not crying, there’s just someone cutting onions sitting next to me.