Norris said in 2007 that he had inadvertently signed an exclusive contract with "PM" and not realized this for a year, after which he had to give up the "Aquaman" feature. In 1943, King Features Syndicate assigned Norris to write and draw the existing strip "Secret Agent X-9", on which he worked for three months before being drafted into the U.S. Army.  Norris said that during his World War II military service as a tech sergeant, "I did a little [comic] strip for the ship newspaper" that came to the attention of Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. "He saw it and made the order that I be transferred from the 82nd Signal Battalion to JIC POA 10th Army", where Norris illustrated propaganda leaflets to be dropped from aircraft over Okinawa, urging Japanese soldiers to surrender. "I worked with a prisoner of war. We wanted the translations to be authentic". Norris in 2006 recalled the POW as George Totari, formerly a reporter for an English language newspaper in Japan. While Norris told one interviewer that, "The Japanese came in with these things in their hands and wanted to surrender", he told another that the leaflet, designed to look like a comic-book page, had not yet gone into print when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, scuttling the project. Following the war, Norris was rehired by King Features Syndicate, and in 1948 began drawing the Sunday edition of Austin Briggs' comic strip "Jungle Jim". He continued to freelance for DC Comics through 1953, drawing the detective feature "Captain Compass" in most issues of "Star Spangled Comics" #106-130 (July 1950 - July 1952), and the super-speedster feature "Johnny Quick" in "Adventure Comics" #171-186 (Dec. 1951 - March 1953). In 1952, Norris succeeded artist Clarence Gray on the science-fiction comic strip "Brick Bradford", continuing to draw it for 35 years until his and the strip's retirement in 1987. The final daily appeared April 25, 1987. As well in the 1950s, Norris drew issues of Dell Comics' "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" and "Jungle Jim", the latter of which he had previously drawn as a newspaper comic strip. The following decade, he drew stories of jungle adventurer Tarzan and science-fiction hero Magnus, Robot Fighter in comic books for Gold Key Comics. With writer Gaylord DuBois, Norris co-created the Gold Key jungle characters Kono and Tono in the namesake series "The Jungle Twins", which ran 17 original issues (April 1972 - Nov. 1975), followed by reprints.