Ruth Atkinson

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Ruth Atkinson Ford, born Ruth Atkinson (June 2, 1918 – June 1, 1997), was an American cartoonist and one of the first women to write and draw comic books. She created Millie the Model and helped co-create Patsy Walker for the early Marvel line.

Born in Toronto, Canada, she moved with her family to upstate New York as a child. She started working in comics around 1942–1943 with Fiction House, sometimes through the Iger Studio, a company that supplied comics to publishers. Other women artists at Iger included Fran Hopper, Lily Renée, and Marcia Snyder; Ruth Roche was a partner there.

Atkinson's first signed work was "Wing Tips" in Wings Comics #42 (Feb. 1944). She continued drawing and inking features such as "Wing Tips," "Clipper Kirk," and "Suicide Smith" in Wings Comics, "Tabu" in Jungle Comics, and "Sea Devil" in Rangers Comics. She later became Fiction House's art director, but left to freelance.

With writer Otto Binder, she drew and co-created Patsy Walker for Timely Comics in Miss America Magazine #2 (Nov. 1944). She drew Patsy Walker for two years and wrote and drew the premiere issue of Millie the Model, a long-running humor/romance series.

In the early 1950s she drew true-life adventures for Heroic Comics (Eastern Color Printing) and contributed to romance comics like Boy Meets Girl and Boy Loves Girl for Lev Gleason Publications. She retired from comics after marriage.

She lived in Pacifica, California, where she died of cancer on June 1, 1997, aged 78. Her brother was Hall of Fame jockey Ted Atkinson.