Ten-Eyed Man

Philip Reardon is a former Vietnam War veteran/warehouse guard who is blinded in a warehouse explosion that burns his retinas. Doctor Engstrom reconnects them to his fingers. Reardon blames Batman for his blindness. He is killed during the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Character History
Veteran Philip Reardon of the U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam had been nicknamed "Three-Eye" Reardon when a grenade fragment left an identation scar on his forehead. Taking a job as a security guard when he returned to Gotham City, Reardon convinced a gang of thieves that he had eyes in the back of his head, too, courtesy of a discreetly placed hand mirror. Disoriented by a blow to the head and suffering blurred vision, Reardon unwittingly staggered onto the scene of an impending explosion at the warehouse vault. Arriving on the scene, Batman assumed he was a thief -- and Reardon believed the Dark Knight was his assailant. The explosion of the vault left both men blinded, Reardon permanently.

While Batman worked with Alfred to arrange technological tricks that would enable him to fake sight, Reardon was taken under the wing of a veteran mobster, who hoped to fan Reardon's newfound hatred of the Dark Knight into an inferno. "A rare natural phenomenon" made Phil eligible for a radical experimental surgery, one that "reconnected (his) optic nerves to the sensory cells in (his) finger-tips. In addition to the sense of touch -- (the doctor had) added sight!"

The ensuing battle between Batman and the Ten-Eyed Man quickly shifted in Reardon's favor when the Dark Knight's vision enhancements were disabled. Blinding one of his hands in the battle, Reardon lunged at Batman with his other fist, which was bagged in the crimefighter's cape at the last moment. While Batman left to summon help, Reardon regained consciousness and escaped (BATMAN # 226).

Convinced that he could beat Batman on his "own" turf, Reardon covertly used his abilities to win a job as a civilian sky-marshall and then hijacked the plane for Vietnam when it was in the air. Demanding that Batman meet him there, the Ten-Eyed Man and the Dark Knight faced off amidst the swamps of the D.M.Z. The conflict seemed to climax when Reardon blinded his foe with a flare and moved in for the kill. Batman, however, had seen the Ten-Eyed Man hide his hands before the detonation and was prepared for the burst of light. Phil Reardon was finally taken into custody (BATMAN # 231).

He could only be kept in a jail cell by keeping his hands locked in a special box that kept him blind all day and night, because with eyes on his fingers, "escape would be child's play for him," although precisely how this would be the case was not elaborated upon.

Martin Pasko (with artists Pablo Marcos and Ricardo Villamonte) revived the Ten-Eyed Man in 1975's MAN-BAT # 2. Reardon had been released into the custody of the Civil Liberties Association, an organization run by a fanatic named Lovell. Imagining that Gotham was "under siege" by "strange bat-people", Lovell wanted the Ten-Eyed Man to capture Man-Bat. With Reardon's nerve-grafts "suffering tissue rejection", his blindness was soon going to return unless the CLA could find a way to replicate Man-Bat's sonar. Setting up a flare bomb to blind the bat-creature, Reardon took the brunt of the blast himself and, disoriented, staggered off the skyscraper roof to his supposed death.

The Ten-Eyed Man was confirmed to have survived by the 1980's, and he continued to remain active, most notably in Gotham City, hiring out his services.

The Ten-Eyed Man was killed in Crisis on Infinite Earths #12 (1985). Reardon had returned during the period of cosmic chaos to take advantage of the confusion in Gotham City, only to be killed during the merging of realities by a shadow assault on the city, which also claimed the lives of Clayface II and the Bug-Eyed Bandit. His only appearance after that was in Animal Man #23, among other characters killed during the Crisis.

Reardon's existence in Post-Crisis continuity is confirmed by his appearance in "Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe XXIII." (1987).

Powers and Abilities
Ten-Eyed Man can see through optic nerves in his fingertips, giving him a complete 360 view. His enhanced vision made him a superb fighter and marksman.