Nick Perks drew this Santa/Superman piece. So how this works is that every day until Christmas Eve, you can click on the current day's Advent Calendar post and it'll have a story in it that is part of my countdown of the 24 Greatest Superman Christmas Comics ever told! And I'll add links to the previous days in each new installment.

Here's Day 1, #24 on the countdown.

Here's Day 2, #23 on the countdown.

Here's Day 3, #22 on the countdown

And now for Day 4, #21 on the countdown is...

"Superman: Peace on Earth" by Alex Ross and Paul Dini.

What hurts this over-sized one-shot when it comes to ranking Christmas stories is that the story really does not dwell that much on the whole "Christmas" aspect of the comic. It is more concerned with Superman's troubles with trying to affect "real" change on the world, as he learns that you can't just solve the world's problems with super strength and heat vision. One of the best sequences in the book is when armed soldiers try to steal some of the food Superman is trying to deliver to starving children. They make it clear that even if he is to stop them today, they'll get the food tomorrow. Is Superman prepared to spend all day, every day on these issues? Of course he isn't.

But before he reaches this sad realization, there is one astonishing Christmas celebration courtesy of Alex Ross' paintings...

WOW! That's enough to still get this story on to the countdown, even if, again, the overall message is a bit more downbeat.