Career
Ruth Atkinson Ford née Ruth Atkinson and a.k.a. Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Ruth Atkinson as an infant moved with her family to upstate New New York One of the first female artists in American comic books, she entered the field doing work for the publisher Fiction House beginning either 1942 or 1943, and either on staff or, as noted by the Connecticut Historical Society, through the Iger Studio, a comic-book "packager" that produced comics for publishers on an outsource basis.
Atkinson"s first confirmed, signed work is the single-page "Wing Tips" featurette in Wings Comics #42 (February 1944).
Atkinson continued to pencil and ink that airplane-profile featurette, as well such Fiction House features as "Clipper Kirk" and "Suicide Smith" in Wings Comics, "Tabu" in Jungle Comics, and "Sea Devil" in Rangers Comics. At some point, she became the Fiction House art director, but left the position to freelance after finding that the managerial position left little time for her art
She would draw that humor/romance feature for two years, as well write and draw the premiere issue of the long-running series Millie the Model. Atkinson later drew true-life adventures for Eastern Color Comics" Heroic Comics, as well for some of the first romance comics comics, including Lev Gleason Publications" Boy Meets Girl, through the early 1950s.
She was living in Pacifica, California, at the time of her death from cancer.
Her brother, horse-racing Hall of Fame jockey Ted Atkinson, died in 2005.