Thongor, the Barbarian Hero That Almost Became More Famous Than Conan.

In the 1960s the Sword and Sorcery genre was experiencing a revival due to the efforts of a number of writers and editors in New York, as well as an attempt to diversify from the waning superhero genre at Marvel Comics. The former effort was spearheaded by Lin Carter, a fiction editor who created the barbarian hero Thongor. The latter effort was spearheaded by Roy Thomas, Marvel's rising star (who would eventually succeed Stan Lee as Editor-in-Chief).

But Thongor was eclipsed by Conan due to a number of factors. Conan had more success in print in the U.S. and U.K., largely due to effective marketing of Robert Howard's literary properties by L. Sprague de Camp,Lin Carter himself. Carter further back-burnered his own character by re-writing a number of his Thongor stories as "official" Conan stories instead.

Over at Marvel, Thomas had planned to adapt Thongor to Marvel comics, but later scrapped the idea in favor of obtaining the license to Conan the Barbarian instead. Though Marvel would eventually get around to adapting some of the Thongor stories in the anthology "Creatures on the Loose".

Fortunately, die-hard fans have kept his work alive, and as recently as 2012 a new collection of Carter's Thongor stories, Young Thongor, appeared. Prominent blogger The Groovy Agent also has scanned many of the long out of print Marvel Thongor stories at his excellent blog, Diversions of the Groovy Kind.