First of all sorry for the late response, It's been a busy week and it kinda slipped my mind.
No, the puppet has always been visible in the Record tab, and I have been able to make recordings without any issue known to me.
The puppet panel is still invisble when opened in Record
And no the background for a new empty is still black, no matter whether I select a white or alpha background with the icon in the right hand corner.
It's working!!!
I thought about what you said about it being related to my graphics card, so I did the following:
Right click the Character animator Icon (in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Character Animator CC 2018)
select Run with graphics processor
select intergrated graphics
and it launched perfectly with everything visible in the rigging tab, normal checkered background, and my character right there! Thank you for your time, I'm just glad the issue is resolved right now and hopefully this helps shed light on other peoples similar problems.