Hawkeye Fact — November 2, 2026

Today's Fact

An assassin took Clint Barton's hearing with Clint's own arrows — and the next issue stopped talking.

HAWKEYE WENT DEAF AGAIN — AND HIS COMIC ANSWERED IN SIGN LANGUAGE!

The Featured Fact

Clint Barton had already lost most of his hearing once, back in 1983, by his own hand. The second loss was an attack: during Matt Fraction and David Aja's run, the mercenary Kazi Kazimierczak — the Clown — caught Barton in the Tracksuit Mafia war and drove the archer's own arrows into his ears, badly damaging his inner and middle ears and leaving him completely deaf.

The response, Hawkeye Vol. 4 #19 (2014), rebuilt the comic around its hero's new silence. Spoken dialogue collapses into empty balloons, and the real conversations happen in American Sign Language, drawn panel by panel and left untranslated — Clint signing with his brother Barney Barton, who had learned alongside him in a childhood neither Barton talks about easily.

Barton spends the issue refusing help and shutting people out before he chooses to stand up for his neighbors and his building anyway. Stark-built hearing aids belong to the aftermath; the celebrated experiment comes first — a mainstream superhero issue that makes hearing readers do the work of lip-reading a world that has stopped explaining itself.

Why It's Obscure

A landmark issue hides inside a street-level gang war, remembered as a cover gimmick when it is really a change of language.

2014

Hawkeye Vol. 4 #19 — Fraction and Aja's near-silent issue, built from empty balloons and fully drawn, untranslated ASL sequences.

The Clown

His own arrows — Kazi's attack used Barton's signature weapon as the instrument, rupturing his eardrums in the middle of the Tracksuit war.

Barney

A brother who can sign — Clint's fluent partner in the issue is Barney Barton, the pair's shared signing rooted in their childhood together.

The aids

Technology waits its turn — Tony Stark's custom hearing aids arrive in the story, but only after an issue spent inside unaccommodated deafness.

Gallery

Verified by eye: two pages from Hawkeye #19 itself, showing the signing the issue is famous for, plus Clint bloodied in a brawl.

Page from Hawkeye issue 19 showing a bandaged Clint Barton being told he has been deafened and signing with his brother — **Straight from issue #19**Verified by eye: a genuine page from Hawkeye Vol. 4 #19 — the diagnosis spelled out in captions ('you have been deafened'), a bandaged Clint in the doctor's office, and finger-spelling panels along the bottom as he signs with Barney.

Clint and Barney Barton talking in American Sign Language with illustrated ASL instruction panels in Hawkeye 19 — **The language of the issue**Verified by eye: another page from the same story — Clint and Barney converse while grey instruction panels demonstrate the ASL signs step by step, exactly as Aja drew them.

Close comic panel of a bloodied Hawkeye in his mask during a fight — **The cost of the street war**Clint Barton, masked and bleeding, in the thick of the brutal close-quarters fighting that defined the Fraction run's final arc.

Sources

Every fact on this page was checked against at least two independent sources before publication.

Bullpen Bulletins

Marvel's Avengers: Hawkeye might be Deaf — PolygonPolygon's history of Barton's hearing: the Clown stabbed his ears and ruptured his eardrums in Fraction and Aja's run, Stark built his aids, and issue #19 rendered his deafness in ASL.
Hawkeye #19 uses deafness to help a broken Clint Barton find his voice — The A.V. ClubThe A.V. Club's review of issue #19: empty word balloons, untranslated sign language between Clint and Barney, and Aja's extra work to depict ASL accurately.
Hawkeye's Comic Hearing Loss Origin Is Too Violent for the MCU — Screen RantScreen Rant's account of the assault: Kazi Kazimierczak, the Clown, stabbed Clint in the ears with arrows during the Tracksuit assault, leaving him permanently deaf.