CHARLES CZARKOWSKI

Real Name:  Charles Czarkowski

Identity/Class: Human advanced technology-user / time traveler

Occupation: Presumably former head of Czarko Industries

Group Membership: At least formerly Czarko Industries

Affiliations: Jennifer Walters (aka She-Hulk), August "Pug" Pugliese

Enemies: Charles Czarkowski (himself, unwittingly), Time Variance Authority (Justice Love, Justice Peace);
    unidentified state prosecutor

Known Relatives: Possible ancestor of Artur Zarrko (aka the Tomorrow Man; see comments)

Aliases: Czarko (from Justice Peace), "John Doe" (from the doctor examining him);
    "Time-traveling scum" (from past self)

Base of Operations: Unidentified hospital

First Appearance: She-Hulk II#1 (December, 2005)

Powers/Abilities: Charles Czarkowski has no superhuman abilities, but he is presumably of genius intellect, allowing him to develop advanced technology, such as the Chrono-Phone, which allowed sending of messages forward and backward in time; a functional time machine, able to send a person (or even a large robot) into his or her own past (and presumably the future as well); a scrambler, which altered the appearance, fingerprints, and DNA of a person prior to time travel; and a large and powerful robot.

    Morally, he had no compunctions with using time travel to manipulate the stock market, potentially damaging various corporations, or striking a peace officer in the back of the head with a fire hydrant to ensure his own financial well-being and/or safety.

    Altered by his own scrambler and then shot in the back, Czarkowski was left in a semi-comatose state when last seen.

Height: (Scrambled form) unrevealed (perhaps 5'10" - 6');
    (pre-scrambling) unrevealed (depending on the perspective, he sometimes appeared a couple inches shorter or taller than the 5'10" Jen Walters; generally seemed shorter, so perhaps 5'6" to 5'10")
Weight: (Scrambled form) unrevealed (perhaps 180 - 200 lbs.);
    (pre-scrambling) unrevealed (perhaps 130 to 160 lbs.)
Eyes: Blue
Hair: (Scrambled form) blond;
    (pre-scrambling) light gray to white (balding; with mustache; likely some other hair color in youth)

History:
(She-Hulk II#2 (fb) - BTS) - Czarkowski developed time-travel technology. To help fund his work, Czarkowski used his Chrono-Phone to contact his future self for financial advice.

    Charles Czarkowski's future self sent his present self stock tips. Buying and selling large shares of Baintronics and other companies, the present Czarkowski accumulated vast wealth while causing rapid fluctuations in Baintronics' value, sometimes to the point of threatening to wipe them out altogether.

(She-Hulk II#2 (fb) - BTS) <A few weeks before the main story> - One of Baintronics time-transmitters intercepted a call Czarkowski had placed from the future, and they discovered that his future self had been sending him stock tips. 

(She-Hulk II#1 (fb) - BTS) - Augustus Pugliese got Czarkowski as a client for himself and Jennifer Walters, his case qualifying for their superhuman law division of their firm, Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg, & Holliway (GLK&H), as he had access to time-travel devices with which he had seen that the man he shot was destined to shoot him in the future. 

(She-Hulk II#1) - Pug introduced Jen to Czarkowski, but she immediately balked at the idea as she considered him the most high profile murderer in America; Pug reminded her that he was the most high profile murder suspect in America. After Pug noted that the shooting was in self-defense and Czarkowski revealed his access to time-travel devices, Jen agreed to take the case. 

(She-Hulk II#1 (fb) - BTS) - Pug came up with the idea of bringing in jurors from the past so they would not be biased by media portrayals of Czarkowski as a murderer.

(She-Hulk II#1 (fb) - BTS) - Contacting the Time Variance Authority, GLK&H's acting leader, Artie Zix (secretly the Recorder RT-Z9) gained approval to bring jurors from the past.

(She-Hulk II#1 (fb) - BTS / She-Hulk II#2 (fb) - BTS) - To prevent temporal disruptions from these past jurors traveling to the future, the TVA chose people who had died in the year before Czarkowski's alleged murder had occurred. Amongst these jurors pulled forward from time was Hawkeye.

(She-Hulk II#2) - The next day (22 days after the shooting), the trial began. After the examining physician reviewed his findings, Jen Walters called Justice Peace to the stand, and Peace confirmed that the DNA of "John Doe" was consistent with someone who had gone through a scrambler, a device that scrambles a time-traveler's DNA, facial features, and anything else that could be used to identify him or her, which prevented corruption of the timestream in the event that the time-traveler was discovered in his or her own past. The process created a very uniform look, as Peace and "John Doe" were virtually identical in appearance to any time traveler who had used the scrambler. Walters concluded that this was proof that "John Doe" was a time-traveler. 

    Walters then called Dr. Vic Vachman, the head of Baintronics research division working on time-travel technologies. Given the motivation due to Czarkowski's manipulation of Baintronics' stocks and their access to time travel equipment, Walters suggested that Vachman could have been the man sent from the future after Czarkowski; upon Walters' query, Vachman was obviously unable to provide an alibi for one week in the future.

    Walters next called Czarkowski himself to the stand, and he readily admitted to manipulating the stock market, noting that developing time-travel technology was rather costly and, "You know what they say, 'Time is money' " Walters then discussed how he used his Chrono-Phone to receive financial advice from his future self, after which she showed the call he had received 22 days ago which seemed to be a man noting he was traveling back in time to kill him.

    When Jen asked why someone would kill him at that particular point in time (rather than as an infant, etc.), Czarkowski answered as set off a device to summon a robot from his past to allow a diversion to facilitate his escape. He answered that he had the day before the shooting he had cracked the true secret of time travel, sending not just messages or going to alternate timelines, but sending people back through their own timeline, and that if he had been killed even a day before, it would have killed time travel itself (see comments).

    Regardless, Czarkowski insisted that, forewarned of the assassin attempt, he had acted in self-defense.

    Justice Peace then noted an I.C.E. (Illegal Chronal Entry, unauthorized teleporting in from the future or past) as Czarkowski's robot arrived. As Justice Peaceand Justice Love engaged the robot and instructed the jurors to remain seated, Czarkowski smashed Justice Love over the back of the head with a fire extinguisher, noting that leaving was his best chance of remaining in one piece. 

    Outside the building, Czarkowski hid in an alley, evading Justice Peace; meanwhile, Judge Haywood declared a mistrial, after which the TVA teleported the jurors back to their times of origins.

    Arriving at Czarko Industries, Czarkowski set some random coordinates on his time machine and used the scrambler so that the TVA would not be able to find him. Before departing, he sent a message to his past self, warning him of the impending attempt on his life.

    As he left the message, however, he realized that his scrambled self was the form of the man he shot, and, in his shocked and confused state, verbalized that he was the one to kill Charles Czarkowski.

    After the message concluded and was sent., Czarkowski realized what he had done, and he prepared to send another message to clarify things to his past self. 

    However, Justice Peace then stopped him, intending for him to fulfill the temporal paradox. To complete this, Peace sent the scrambled Czarkowski 22 days into the past, and he emerged on 7th Avenue a short distance in front of his past self. Distracted by a kid who asked to "shoot" him (take a picture), the time-traveling, scrambled Czarkowski was unable to act before the past Czarkowski recognized him as his seeming would-be killer and then shot him in the back.

(She-Hulk II#2) - Back in the present, Pugliese, Walters, and the state prosecutor gathered in the room of the stuporous John Doe, and Pug noted that, speaking on behalf of his client, he would like to drop all charges against the shooter. They further argued with the prosecutor that it was not attempted murder, but attempted suicide, which was not a criminal expense, and that giving stock market advice to one's self was also not a criminal offense. 

(She-Hulk II#1 (fb) - BTS) - For having tried to warn Hawkeye of his death, She-Hulk was taken into custody to be tried for tampering with time, with the penalty of being erased from history.

Comments: Created by Dan Slott, Juan Bobillo, and Marcelo Sosa.

    The name Czarkowski seems too close to Zarrko (as in the Tomorrow Man) for the fact that they are both time-travelers to be coincidence, especially with continuity-conscious Dan Slott as the writer. Even more clearly, Czarkowski's business was called Czarko Industries.
    2006' All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe#12 and 2010's Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z hardcover#14 noted Czarkowski as a possible ancestor and included this note:

    Any relationship to Charles Czarkowski of Czarko Industries — who became the 9th wealthiest man in the world via stock tips from his future self before unwittingly shooting his disguised future self in the head, rendering him comatose — is unconfirmed.

Two definite errors with that…(1) He shot his future self in the back, not the head; (2) He wasn’t comatose, as he was making inarticulate vocalization. I think semi-comatose or stuporous would be OK.
It could be clarified that he got the stock tips from an undisclosed point in the future, but apparently further ahead than the version who got shot who had traveled back 22 days from his own present. It’s complex.
It would be more clear/correct to say (without adding extensive explanation):

Note : Any relationship to Charles Czarkowski of Czarko Industries — who became the 9th wealthiest man in the world via stock tips from his future self before unwittingly shooting his disguised near-future self in the back, rendering him semi-comatose — is unconfirmed.

    I didn't really get why killing Czarkowski after he discovered the secret of time travel would have killed time travel itself, as all kinds of people were using time travel long before this. 

    The doctor who examined the "John Doe" victim was described in-story as a medical examiner. That term is typically used for a doctor that examines victims after their deaths. 

    At the time of this story, Hawkeye had been killed by the maddened Scarlet Witch during Avengers Disassembled (he got better). Jen Walters repeatedly tried to tell Hawkeye that he was going to die and how in an effort to save him, but Hawkeye paid her no heed. 

    Getting shot in the back would not leave him semi-comatose, but perhaps he had brain damage due to blood loss, hypotension, hypoxia, increased cerebrospinal pressure, etc.

    This profile was completed 09/30/2022, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 25^th anniversary 's celebratory event to represent She-Hulk's 21^st Century characters and stories.

Profile by Snood.

CLARIFICATIONS:
Charles Czarkowski should be distinguished from:

• ZARRKO the TOMORROW MAN (Artur Zarrko) - human from alternate future of Earth-6297’s 23^rd century, would-be world-conqueror--Journey into Mystery I#86
• CZAR - Time Diamond-user, pulled through time and memories erased by the Time Variance Authority's Minutemen--Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine#2
• CZAR PETER of Earth-9997 (Piotr Nikolaevitch Rasputin) - Ruler of Russia, X-Men,used knowledge of farming to return country to super power status, later revealed to be Sinister--Earth X Sketch, Earth X#8
• CZAR-DOON - Badoon, Thanos-Thrall--Captain Marvel I#32
• CZARINA CATHERINE (Captain Donelson) - @ 1890, ship used by Dracula to travel from London back to Varna--Stoker's Dracula#4
• CZARNOBOG of Earth-3470 - see CHERNOBOG - Russian god, responsible for the Darkforce, used by Darkstar in effort to blanket the Earth with Darkforce, dispelled by Snowbird--Exiles#84
• CZARZAK of the Hyborian era - Kordavan torturer, interrogated Nafertali, slain by Conan--Savage Sword of Conan#61
• other "Czar" characters, groups, items, races, or places

Appearances:
She-Hulk II#1 (December, 2005) - Dan Slott (writer), Juan Bobillo (penciler), Marcelo Sosa (inker), Andy Schmidt, Molly Lazer, & Aubrey Sitterson (assistant editors), Tom Brevoort (editor)
She-Hulk II#2 (January, 2006) - Dan Slott (writer), Juan Bobillo (penciler), Marcelo Sosa (inker), Andy Schmidt, Molly Lazer, & Aubrey Sitterson (assistant editors), Tom Brevoort (editor)
All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe#12 (December, 2006) - Jeff Christiansen (head writer/coordinator), Michael Hoskin, Stuart Vandal, Al Sjoerdsma, Eric J. Moreels, Sean McQuaid, Chad Anderson, Mark O'English, Anthony Flamini, Ronald Byrd, Jacob Rougemont, Mike Fichera, Madison Carter, Chris Biggs (writers), Jeff Youngquist & Jennifer Grunwald (editors)
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z hardcover#14 (June, 2010) - Jeff Christiansen & Mike Fichera (head writers/coordinators), Markus Raymond & Mike O'Sullivan (coordination assistants), Stuart Vandal, Sean McQuaid, Michael Hoskin, Ronald Byrd, Markus Raymond, Mike O'Sullivan, Madison Carter, Kevin Garcia, Gabriel Shechter, Jacob Rougemont, Rob London, Rich Green, Chris Biggs, David Wiltfong, Jeph York, Mark O'English, & Mike Gagnon (writers), John Denning (associate editor), Alex Starbuck (assistant editor), Theodore Kutt (copy editor), Mark D. Beazley (editor, special projects), Jeff Youngquist & Jennifer Grunwald (editor)

First posted: 09/06/2026
Last updated: 07/28/2026

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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