Prior to the explosion he was the priest of Middletown. He was embezzling funds from the church and was finally going to confess the night that the gamma bomb went off. In an attempt to gain more test subjects for his experiments, Leader detonated a controlled gamma bomb in a Middletown which killed over 5000 people. The blast created five new superhuman enforcers whom Leader used to build the hidden society called Freehold in the Arctic.
 
Soulman's transformation made him into a nearly omnipotent being who could bring the dead back to life. He was killed in a battle between Hulk and Leader.