Today, DC Comics, via its blog The Source unveiled the cover for Walt Simonson's 94-page hardcover graphic novel "The Judas Coin," hitting stores September 18. Featuring characters from across the DCU, Simonson's cover sets its sights on a featured showdown between Batman and Two-Face with a number of other images throughout time in the background.

"The cover for 'The Judas Coin' was designed and drawn with inspiration provided in part by movie posters from the '60s and '70s," Simonson told The Source. "In particular, I was thinking of the posters of Bob Peak, who did such beautiful work back then with montage. Peak was a master at creating a strong central image and surrounding it with smaller, often fairly loose images derived from various scenes in the movie. I make no claims to Peak's draftsmanship, but for a work like 'The Judas Coin,' comprised as it is of six separate but related stories, I wanted a cover that would provide both a strong visual image at its core, and a series of small drawings that would reflect the structure of the book's interior. Batman and Two-Face, eternal enemies, provided a good focal point. The vignettes around them echo the individual stories within the book.

Simonson spoke to CBR News at CCI 2011 about 'The Judas Coin' and revealed the graphic novel began as a pitch for DC's "Solo" series. The creator also gave a general outline for the graphic novel, which spans nearly 2000 years of DC history. "It's six short stories that are threaded thematically together over about a 2000 year span mostly involving minor DC characters that are over in the corners of places that I like to work," Simonson told CBR. "Hopefully it'll come out as a large, interesting idea by the time I'm done." At the time, Simonson was three weeks from finishing the graphic novel.

Stay tuned to CBR for more details on "The Judas Coin."