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This question makes my heart heavy a little bit, because the two names that leap to mind are Dwayne McDuffie and Steve Gerber. I loved everything I ever read that those two guys wrote, they were both huge influences on me, they were personal heroes of mine, and they both were so ridiculously supportive and kind to me that it's hard to think about either of them without feeling really weighed down by loss.
They both spoke to the outsider in comics, which definitely included me. When I was young, I didn't even know ANY girls read comics. But stories by Dwayne and Steve made that not matter so much.
The problem is, those guys weren't appreciated by the industry as a whole when they were around and available and I'm not sure that it would be any different now.