Cover Art Reveal for Custody!
By Skywing Knights // February 25, 2026
I am so excited to bring you a brand new Cover Art Reveal for “Custody” by the insanely talented hains.mae on Instagram!
Read “Custody” on Fanfiction.net
Loopholes, deception, disappearances.
Puzzle pieces that need to be put together.
A villain watches from the corner of his only eye the Boy Wonder.
But Robin has another problem, too.
It’s an evergrowing fight with the Dark Knight.
A father son story.
This project has been in the works for quiet some time. While I do sometimes make my own covers for my stories (like Melonpan Runaways), I really wanted to get original artwork for Custody done. As my favorite story and longest story, I really wanted it to have cover art that did it justice. So I set out on a search for an artist that I felt could capture the tone and feel of “Custody.” And I searched. And I searched. Finally though, I found the incredible artist for the job – hains.mae! If you haven’t seen her art and are a fan of the Teen Titans and Bat-family, I can’t recommend her enough. Her art is both unique and pays tribute to both the comics and the animations based off of them. As “Custody” was a melding of both mediums and because I loved mae’s particular specialty for the bat-boys, I couldn’t help but feel that it was a perfect match!
hains.mae worked extremely hard on the cover art. We went back and forth discussing the story, drafts, colors, tones, characters, scenes etc. And then one day, I received this beautiful cover art in my inbox. I could have cried. It felt so so right and I can’t thank hains.mae enough for all of her hard work on it!
The Writing Process
I wrote “Custody” primarily during my high school years under my only penname at the time “Rena Redhead”. “Custody” consumed me. Every day I thought about it, plotted it, thought about who would say what, how I could make it feel raw, realistic, and emotionally gripping. I made notes everywhere. I used note cards. And after my homework was done, I was back to sitting on the couch writing. Even then, I had the attitude of “If I’m going to write something, I want to make it something that I’d want to read it again. That way, if no one else will read it, at least I’d enjoy it.” To this day, I think that way of thinking has served “Custody” well.
Why I wrote it… I don’t know if I still have my original reason, other than that I loved “Teen Titans”. But looking back on it, I believe a large part of it was because I loved the character of Dick Grayson and he was my “hero”. I say “hero” in the sense that I often felt that if “Dick Grayson could do something, then so could I.” If he could deal with things that were unfair, so could I. If he could stay true to what he believed was right, so could I. And if he could deal with manipulative people, so could I. I felt for him. Reading and watching his story, seeing him grow and become stronger, and ultimately, continuing to love others, it always gave me hope that no matter what I was going through, I could do the same. That’s why I think I wrote “Custody”. That, and it was such a fun story idea, not gonna lie. 😉
The Cover Art and AO3
Mae created 3 Cover Art pieces as part of this project. The first (see above) has two versions. One for both of my pennames (Skywing Knights and Rena Redhead). She also created a back side (see below). It’s been a dream of mine to finally print “Custody” for personal use only, so I hope to use both sides for that one day.
Additionally, to celebrate the new cover art, I plan in March to begin uploading “Custody” to both my Archive of Our Own account and to Wattpad! So be sure to check it out on both platforms linked below!
Rena Redhead on Archive of Our Own (AO3)
Rena Redhead on Wattpad
Once again, I can’t thank hains.mae enough for her outstanding artistic talent and skill and for contributing it to making this cover for “Custody”. It seems like the perfect tribute to this magnum opus of a story of mine, and I’m so glad we got to collaborate on it.
Till next time!
Later,
~Skywing / Rena
