See the cover for Alan Moore's next novel, “The Great When”

The new book will explore "the forgotten spaces, startling events, and fabulous neglected characters" of London's history, the writer says.

One of the great writers of our time is ready to show you London like you've never seen it before.

Alan Moore, whose iconic comics like Watchmen set a new standard for that medium, has an upcoming book set in and about London. His last novel, 2016's Jerusalem, was set entirely in Moore's hometown of Northampton, excavating the magical histories lying just beneath the surface of the working-class community. His new novel The Great When will give London the same treatment, and is actually the first in a series he's calling the "Long London quintet." Get your exclusive first look at the cover image below.

"The Long London quintet is an elaborate excuse for me to excavate the city's secret jewelry; the forgotten spaces, startling events, and fabulous neglected characters that are embedded in the place's blazing and unlikely history, but which seldom, if at all, see literary daylight," Moore tells EW in a statement. "And it isn't only London that's examined here, but also London's progress through our previous eventful century, from the smoking rubble following the last World War to the precarious cliff-edge of the new millennium."

Moore has tackled London before — if you've read From Hell, his epic graphic novel about Jack the Ripper with artist Eddie Campbell, it's hard to forget the chapter where the killer points out important London landmarks and monuments that form a pentagram. The Great When, and the Long London quintet overall, are set to dive even deeper into the city's history and culture.

"The series is a panorama of lost moments and elusive atmospheres, a range of alien facets to a grand metropolis that almost everyone assumes is already familiar to them," Moore continues. "Indeed, considering the oddness of the narrative, I'd harboured doubts that any cover image could come close to accurately representing it. How wrong I was. The wraps of The Great When are a small illustrative masterpiece that perfectly reflects the book's hallucinatory mood and storyline, along with that of the post-war decade the work is set in. You can almost smell the coal-smoke and boiled cabbage. I hope that the prospective reader will be just as captivated by this riotous and uncanny urban walk as I myself have been, and look forward to bumping into them upon the eerie street-corners of The Great When. See you there."

The Great When: A Long London Novel will be published on Oct. 1 in the U.S. by Bloomsbury.

Related content:

• See the cover of comics legend Alan Moore's first short-story collection, Illuminations

• How Alan Moore ripped James Bond to shreds

• Jerusalem by Alan Moore: EW review

• Watchmen: An oral history

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.