Stan Lee was a seminal part of Miya Crummell’s childhood. As a young, black girl and self-professed pop culture geek, she saw Lee was ahead of his time.

“At the time, he wrote ‘Black Panther’ when segregation was still heavy,” said the 27-year-old New Yorker who is a graphic designer and independent comic book artist. “It was kind of unheard of to have a black lead character, let alone a title character and not just a secondary sidekick kind of thing.”

Crummell spent much of the ‘90s engrossed in Marvel Comics. And she felt so indebted to Lee that she waited in line to meet him at a 2012 convention.

“I had a chance to tell him he was my hero,” she said. “He influenced my whole career path and I got to thank him for that.”

Lee, the master and creator behind Marvel’s biggest superheroes, died at age 95 on Monday.

As fans celebrate his contributions to the pop culture canon, some have also revisited how Lee felt that with his comic books came great responsibility. The Marvel wizard used his pen to conquer such real-world foes as racism and xenophobia. Since the 1960s, Lee advocated for tolerance through the only platform he had: the comic book pages.