An artist I discovered on my explorations of Golden Age/Pre-Code material is Al Walker. He worked almost exclusively on lesser-known backup strips for Fiction House (well-known for its good-girl art adventure series), on likeable humorous backup characters who were generally doing support work in the military such as mechanics, driving a jeep and other behind-the-lines jobs during World War II, who despite their less than alpha-male stature, always seemed to be surrounded by gorgeous women.

And despite being a mixture of humor and adventure, more humor, Walker's art was beautifully rendered, ornately detailed, and presented intelligent but fun storytelling. In its mix of wartime patriotism, playfulness and optimism, with down-on-their-luck heroes, Walker's art presents the core spirit of the Golden Age/Pre-Code era, with an abundance of skillfully drafted visual humor.

Here's a sampling of Walker's art:
http://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2018/03/glory-forbes-al-walker-1946.html
From RANGERS COMICS 30, August 1946.

Under the byline "Bob Hickock". For reasons I don't fully understand, virtually no one in the Golden Age seemed to do art under their own name. Presumably the idea was for a workshop/studio to do a strip under a pen name, so that any artist could draw the strip under that name and appear to be the same artist.

Possibly also, many new artists didn't think their work was that good, and chose to use a pen name till they reached a level of talent. But even artists like Will Eisner and Lou Fine often worked under pseudonyms.
And needless to say, many artists and writers similarly working on Superman and Batman went uncredited under other names. Most likely it was studio-imposed, and not the choice of individual artists.



So far as I know, Walker did a total of approximately 106 stories across 1941-1948, with a two-year gap from 1943-1945, presumably because (like Jack Kirby) he had to take a break from comics to serve in the military overseas.

Walker's longest run was in WINGS COMICS, issues 8-34, 48, and 70-96, mostly doing "Greasemonkey Griffin".

And also in:

FIGHT COMICS 21-22, "Blackout" series.

JUNGLE COMICS 16-35, "Simba, King of Beasts"

RANGER COMICS
2-4, "Jeep Milarky",
6-9, "Private Elmer Pippin and the Colonel's Daughter"
7-48 "Glory Forbes"

and

PLANET COMICS 12-22, "Norge Benson".