Welcome to the twenty-first installment of A Very Merry X-Mas, where I count down my 24 favorite X-Men (or X-Men related) Christmas stories!

Today, we look at #4 in the countdown, "Better to Give..." by Rob Williams, Laurence Campbell and Kris Justice from Wolverine #49.

This is a really underrated Christmas tale as you really don't hear much about it and that's a shame, as it is a really well told story with amazing artwork from Campbell and Justice (Campbell is always terrific). It's a LITTLE bit known for the amazing cover that I show a piece of above for the featured image, but that cover has been used for other stuff since and the story it was originally attached to gets lost a little bit in the process.

In any event, the basic concept of the comic book is "Die Hard in Macy's," only with more of a Christmas vibe than the actual Die Hard film, which was also set at Christmastime.

The story opens with Wolverine stuck in Macy's (called Lacy's in the story) to pick up some presents as a favor to Kitty Pryde while he is in New York. An aggressive sales woman tries to spray Wolverine with some perfume and she accidentally sprays a young heiress, instead.

The heiress is a bit of a brat, as we see her with her bodyguards, let by her main bodyguard, who is a former New York City cop and the two of them bicker constantly...

Her rich father has rented her a private visit with Santa Claus, but she's obviously not interested. Things get more interesting, though, when Santa's elves pull out guns and wipe out most of her security detail. Her main bodyguard, Pinter, tries to shield her, but is unable to stop the bad guys from getting her. He manages to at least escape down the chute that they send little kids down after they see Santa. So he begins to fight his way back up to Santa's grotto.

Meanwhile, the rich girl, Toulouse Lexington (a play on Paris Hilton, but it is kind of odd, as she doesn't really act like Paris Hilton), now meets the head of the bad guys, a terrorist group calling themselves Black Christmas, who are out to make people pay for forgetting the true meaning of Christmas...

Pinter runs into Wolverine, who is similarly working his way up the chain to get to the bad guys...

Of course, since this is an homage to Die Hard, the terrorists aren't really terrorists. This is all a diversion to allow them to get out of Lacy's with their kidnap victim so that they can ransom her off later. The head of Black Christmas is an especially cynical jerk who believes that there is no one out there who is willing to put themselves at risk to help others. He thinks that everyone is out for themselves.

Anyhow, their plan is working pretty beautifully. They blow up one of the top floors of Lacy's and then, in the mass of people exiting the building, they all manage to escape while wearing Santa Claus disguises (Toulouse is also wearing one, but she's also decked out with an explosive harness).

The group gets together at Rockefeller Center's ice skating rink to celebrate the fact that they've actually pulled off a successful kidnapping in the middle of New York City, with the Avengers, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four all around to theoretically stop them. Toulouse breaks down and shows that, deep down, she's just a kid wishing she could be with her father at Christmas, but it looks bleak for her, until, well, remember how she was accidentally sprayed with that perfume earlier? Know who has a real keen sense of smell?

Awesome page, right? However, again, the leader of Black Christmas is a total jerk, so if he can't have her, then no one will...

Another amazing page layout by Campbell.

So time is ticking down and things look bleaker than ever, but Wolverine steps in, slices off the harness and, well, takes one for the team...

What a beautifully twisted finale.

This is a really great comic. Williams sure came up with an extremely tight, clever story. A Die Hard riff while still managing to have his own unique spin on things. It is an extra-sized comic, so there is lot more comic book goodness for you to check out. Some more brilliantly arranged pages by Campbell.