Soul Stealer

“Money is not the root of all evil. Misery is. Misery starts wars, kills children, destroys souls. Misery proves the universe is uncaring and random and cruel. Misery proves that creation is a lie.”

Soul Stealer is a powerful, demonic supervillain and the main antagonist of the Midnight Nation comic book series, published by Top Cow (which is famous for such titles as The Darkness and Witchblade).

Soul Stealer continues the legacy of Top Cow antagonists having heavy real-world theological influences, in his case he has aspects of both Satan and the Demiurge in his origin, design and ultimate end-goals.

History
Long before the events of the main story the entity that would becomes Soul Stealer was apparent an angel of God who rebelled against his creator and dedicated himself to a dark philosophy based around spreading misery across all of Creation, so much in fact that he hoped to overwork God Himself and destroy Creation entirely so as to show that God's promise of a better world was just a lie.

To serve in this cause the great destroyer (somewhat ironically) creates servitors known as Walkers who sell drugs, rape and kill whenever or however he tells them to (in essence playing the role of demons).

In order to try and balance things out a deal was apparently made in which God's promise would be tested and the Soul Stealer could play a game to determine ownership of a person's very soul - if they allowed misery to overtake them then Soul Stealer was victorious, likewise if they overcame Soul Stealer's influence and acted selflessly in the interest of a better world Soul Stealer would have to (temporarily) relent.

Many souls were lost in this fashion despite an angel known as Laurel being assigned to try and save them, until finally David Grey came along and after many struggles finally understood what he had to so and sacrificed his soul to Laurel, allowing her to become human.. this selfless act proved that God's promise of a better world was possible and thus Soul Stealer experienced his first true defeat.