Some of the early Nordling's pen names are Fred Nordley, F. Klaus, Ed Norris, and Clyde North.
[3] From 1935 to 1937, he wrote and drew the weekly newspaper comic strip Baron Munchausen for Van Tine Features,[4] under the pen name Fred Nordley.
His first confirmed credit is as penciler-inker of the six-page feature "Lt. Drake of Naval Intelligence" in Fox's Mystery Men Comics #1 (Aug. 1939).
[5] In 1942, Nordling began his best-known comics work, "Lady Luck", which appeared as a four-page weekly feature in a Sunday newspaper insert colloquially called "The Spirit Section".
This 16-page, tabloid-sized, newsprint comic book, sold as part of eventually 20 Sunday newspapers with a combined circulation as high as five million, starred Will Eisner's masked detective the Spirit.
The titular crimefighting adventureress Lady Luck had been created and designed in 1940 by Eisner (who wrote her first two stories under the pseudonym "Ford Davis"),[10] with artist Chuck Mazoujian.
After briefly being replaced by the humor feature "Wendy the Waitress" by Robert Jenny, "Lady Luck" returned from May 5 to November 3, 1946, under cartoonist Fred Schwab.
[13] For the U.S. Army, he contributed to the instructional "Joe Dope" feature in PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly, which American Visuals produced.
[3] Working with Eisner, he wrote and drew the comic Job Scene, designed to teach job-seeking skills to economically disadvantaged youth.