Picking the Wrong Side

Read/Watch 'em In Order #101

Henry Kuttner's second Elak of Atlantis tale appeared in the July 1938 issue of Weird Tales and this time snagged a pretty awesome Virgil Finlay cover.

The first Elak story had ended with the hero accompanied by the woman he'd fallen in love with, so "Spawn of Dagon" is probably set earlier in Elak's life. The girl is nowhere to be found, though another beautiful damsel in distress is in need of rescuing.

Elak and his perpetually drunken sidekick Lycon begin the story looting the corpse of a city guard they had just killed. Lycon falls into a drunken stupor at a a really bad moment, forcing Elak to carry him while fleeing from still more guards.

They are helped by a guy named Gesti, who takes them into an underground labyrinth and is soon offering Elak a job: kill a wizard named Zend and destroy the red sphere that is the source of Zend's magic.

With Lycon still drunk, Elak takes on the job alone. But after entering Zend's home through a secret passage, he encounters difficulties. Among these difficulties are a disembodied head that shouts out warnings of intruders and a massive minion whom Zend recognizes as a recently executed criminal. Despite his recent death, thuogh, the criminal is still walking around.

But these difficulties are nothing compared to the fact that Gesti--the man who hired Elak... well, he isn't really a man. And having  Zend killed is actually the first step in a plan to destroy humankind. So Elak soon realized he's on the wrong side.

 "Spawn of Dagon" is a great story: exciting and atmospheric, with humor effectively peppered through throughout tale. The character of Lycon is used very effectively. He seems worse then useless at first, but proves his loyalty and occasional usefulness at the  story's climax.

 As I mentioned earlier, this story seems to take place before "Thunder in the Dawn." I like continuity in my fictional universe, so it's tempting for me to theorize about  the chronology of Elak's adventures.

But sometimes it's better to treat a series of  tales about a particular hero as a series of mythic legends that don't require an internal chronology. Film director George Miller has this attitude about the Mad Max movies. I recently had an online discussion in which someone made a very good case for looking at the original Conan the Barbarian stories this way rather than paying attention to any of the suggested chronologies that have been published over the years. Perhaps it's best to look at the Elak stories the same way. I'll use my authority as an obscure blogger with a tiny readership to adjudicate on this after we've looked at the last two stories in the series.