Fallen angles 1 variant
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Naughty Gabby!
That's fanart, by the way, not an upcoming cover.
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I really hope that cover leads to work for the artist. It's a wickedly clever cover in how it sells the joke, and it's a gorgeous piece to boot!
Lovely drawing it ties into my preference for less is more. I find it better than the other one he did. It's softer and more elegant and hides just how dangerous she is. Which IMHO is more effective and speaks more to the power and strength she represents. As the old saying goes, a badass is simply a badass. A badass never talks about being a badass.
Like someone said above, it's simply because of sales. These are retailer variants, so it's nothing to do with what's inside the book. X-23 is simply the best seller among the characters featured in the book.
I feel like I've explained what retailer variants are several times before, but just in case: Retailers (mostly online comic book stores) can create their own covers to upcoming comic books as long as they order at least 4000 copies (at least that used to be the number, haven't checked recently) and the cover art gets approved by Marvel. Those books are then sold exclusively by the retailer(s) in question. They are not distributed to other comic book stores along with Marvel's "own" variants, so you won't find them in your local store. They are usually priced much higher than regular cover price because they're "rare" and aimed at the collector's market. The Junggeun Yoon variant shown a few posts above is being sold for $35, for example.
Incidentally I just realized why the face on Maer's drawing looked so familiar. It's Emilia Clark aka Daenerys Targaryen from the HBO series Game of Thrones. Dany's one of my favourite literary heroines, there is a strong corelation between her and Laura.
And she has a hard core enthusiastic fan base that will buy anything with her on it.