Here’s a sound attack dodge in solo avengers #17 (1989): although as you can see, the coloring places it outside of his mask (half the time clint’s mask is portrayed as covering his ears and half not because of coloring): notably, this is also the only panel i’ve seen from 1984-1996 where clint visibly has a hearing aid. Solo avengers #16 (1989) has clint hearing something that would be undetectable by an average hearing person. Solo avengers #10 (1988) establishes in-comic that clint is 80% deaf in both ears, a specificity which had only previously been mentioned in his marvel handbook entries: The first instance is in solo avengers #9 (1988): it’s interesting to note that in all but one of these instances, clint is written as either turning down his hearing aid to avoid sound-based attacks, or “turning it up” to hear extraordinarily quiet noises.
this issue was written by mark gruenwald, who also wrote hawkeye v1 where clint was deafened, so he was in a good position to call back to it and remind the reader of this development:Īll further acknowledgment of clint’s hearing loss in this period occurred in one series: solo avengers (later renamed to avengers: spotlight). He first mentions that he’s wearing a hearing aid in captain america #317 (1986). His hearing loss isn’t brought up again until over a year later in west coast avengers v2 #1 (1985): He informs cap, who wasn’t present in #239, of his hearing loss (and elopement) in avengers #241 (1984):
He would remain so up until either 1996 or the end of 1997, after which he was hearing once again (we’ll get to his re-deafening in 2014 later). the following panels will focus on the 1984-1996 period.Ĭlint returned to the avengers after the events of his solo series in avengers #239 (1984), wherein he informed the team of his hearing loss and was given a hearing aid (which he chooses not to wear in the issue because he’s appearing on tv): 1 #4 (released in december 1983), clint became hard of hearing when he activated his hypersonic arrowhead in his mouth to drown out a mind-control frequency:Ĭlint’s subsequent official marvel handbook entries would note that he was 80% deaf in both ears: in the last issue of his first solo series, hawkeye vol. See here for my simplified timeline of 616 clint barton’s deafnessĬlint barton debuted in 1964 as a hearing character. Mentions of 616 hawkeye’s deafness prior to 2014