Erik Kristofer Czerny was an ex-soldier in the corporation wars in the year 2099, who was later kidnapped by Margaretta Von Geisterstadt and programmed to believe himself to be the 20th Century’s Victor Von Doom. In the 21st Century, where the world’s power seemed to be centered within a small collection of mega corporations, a pair of shadows secretly ruled. One of these was Margaretta, alive since the 20th Century, and the other was her partner, Victor Von Doom. In order to deal with the boredom of ultimate power and long life, these two continued to play complex games against each other. Erik Czerny was simply another pawn in their ongoing competition.
Years earlier, when Victor returned through their teleport gate with his armor shutting down and his physical body failing, Margaretta put his body in her genetic tanks and used Erik’s DNA to rebuild him in the soldier’s image. This repair would take her machines ten years and in the interim she replaced her partner by programming Erik to believe himself the true Doom. When the ten years were up, Margaretta set the original Doom loose in Latveria with fragmented memories of the 20th Century, mixed in with some of Erik’s memories to keep him doubting his identity.
Doom discovered the existence of the counterfeit Doom through Erik’s father, General Tibor Diaghilev Czerny, the ruler of the information hub, Myridia. Though before he could confront the other Doom, Erik rebuilt the android Tiger Wylde and sent him after Doom. Doom eventually defeated Wylde and piloted his floating city, Alchemax’s Valhalla, to the island Citadel where Doom and Margaretta ruled. There, after finally destroying Wylde, Doom faced Margaretta who set him against Erik, the Doom imposter.
Still unsure whether he was the true incarnation, Doom attacked Erik. During the fight, Margaretta sent them through Doom’s time platform and into late 19th Century Latveria. There, Doom and Erik continued their evenly matched fight. A nearby Latverian villager, who Doom recognized as his own grandfather, watched the fight, becoming fascinated by the metal masks that both wore, thereby incidentally creating the original mask that Victor based his armor on. Erik then used his remote activator to the time platform to escape, but accidentally sent them hurtling through a series of time periods and places, including World War II Germany, the Baxter Building in the late 20th Century, and various future periods. In order to save them both, Doom initiated a plan to expand the energy fields of both their armors to gain control of the time-shifting, sending them back onto the island in the year 2089.
While insubstantial, the two observed the moment of Erik’s creation into the false Doctor Doom, and the beginning of Victor Von Doom’s technological convalescence. Horrified by the truth, Erik became distracted, and Doom took advanced of his shifted attention to take control of Erik’s armor, using the time platform remote, himself, to bring them back to 2099, before first grabbing a set of his original armor. Doom ignored Margaretta’s pleas of friendship and left both her and Erik Czerny to their deaths as the rip the pair of Dooms’ time-shifting caused sucked the island into itself, leaving only the true Victor Von Doom alive.
