Tak is back.

Tak the cruel. Tak the despot.

Tak the sleazy, the ghastly, the unthinkable.

Tak!

First, Tak showed up as the ancient evil force of Stephen King’s newest biceps-building, bad-dream book, “Desperation.” Then, just when you thought — nay, hoped — Tak might be out of your life forever, Richard Bachman has revived him as the blood-and-guts guru of “The Regulators.”

Several years ago, when Stephen King revealed that he was Richard Bachman and began writing solely under his own name, you may have thought Bachman was out of your life forever, too. He was, after all, reported to have died from cancer of the pseudonym.

Well, as the meanies say in “Desperation”: Tak!

Even Mr. Spock came back from the dead.

Alas, when Bachman’s widow was preparing to move two years ago, she found several of her deceased husband’s unpublished manuscripts in the cellar. “The Regulators,” literary agent Charles Verrill explains in an editor’s note, was apparently on its way to the publisher when Bachman croaked.

So Bachman is back, too. Like it or not.

Lifting generously from themes mass-marketed by King, Bachman unwinds the tale of a community in Ohio that is taken over by Tak, who virally inhabits the body of an autistic boy named Seth. The town is subsequently invaded by life-size action figures from a children’s show on TV.

The biggest connection to King is in the rehashing of several characters introduced in “Desperation.” Johnny Marinville, the Harley-riding writer in “Desperation,” is recreated here as a children’s book author. He’s still an alcoholic with a hazy past, but instead of heading out on a tour, he sits on his porch and plays a guitar.

Collie Entragian, once a brutal cop who died a rotted corpse, is now a well-meaning good guy who was recently framed by a departmental scam and then fired. There’s also the Carver family, as well as Audrey, Doc, Steve, Cynthia and, of course, Tak — all in slightly skewed reincarnations.

Seth is the one who takes center stage, however, because his mind gets taken over by Tak. That old devil Tak, buried all these years in a hole in Nevada, is just as wicked as ever. But the MotoKops are the real bad guys, because if you get hit by one of their drive-by shootings your face might explode or your arm might get blasted off — and then everyone else gets to read about it in great detail in the book.

Tak!

Details are, in fact, the backbone of this story, a perverted fantasy with a pubescent fixation on action figures and old episodes of “Bonanza.” Unlike “Desperation,” where the characters have life stories to tell while they fight the evil forces, “The Regulators” never becomes engaging enough and its voices never become distinct enough for us to care if the characters get blown away by the MotoKops.

The story, which is filled with the usual King megadoses of gratuitous sexual references and violence, never really gets going. There’s lots of repetition, lots of unnecessary information, lots of ridiculous digression — and it makes for a slow and laborious read. Richard Bachman, it turns out, should perhaps stay dead — or at least get a better editor.

“The Regulators” is “Desperation” gone awry.

If you can imagine that.

And if you can, then this is the book for you. Put on your Underoos, get some chocolate milk and settle in for a good brush with Saturday-morning-cartoons-meet-the-Terminator.

For the rest of King’s Constant Readers, this book may well be knocking at the door of a very justifiable saturation point. You may find yourself uttering a final “Tak!” which will surely be followed by the plea, “Enough already.”