Even though Muslim superheroes have appeared in American comic books since the 1940s, their number grew steadily in the post- 9/11 climate. Their occurrence seems coincidental until we recognize the connection between superheroes and politics, particularly during times of war. This is best seen in Captain America’s timely debut in comics during World War II, just as the U.S. prepared to enter the war and sought support among the American public. The first cover of his comic book showed him punching   Hitler   in   his   face . However, he wasn’t the only superhero to punch a Nazi during this time. The first American Muslim superhero, Kismet, also did the same. Several other Muslim superheroes followed Kismet in the decades to come, often tokenized and without their own comic book series, until 2014 when the Pakistani-American superhero, Kamala Khan (alias: Ms. Marvel) debuted. In the post-9/11 era, Muslim superheroes often promoted the Global War on Terror (GWOT) as a form of soft power directed at American audiences, who were eager for content that promoted American exceptionalism. Within a year of the GWOT’s launch, the first post-9/11 Muslim superhero, Sooraya Qadir, debuted in the popular X-Men comic series. A veiled superheroine in a tight-fitting abaya, Sooraya was at the periphery of the storyline that saw her launch. However, that didn’t stop her from gracing the cover of her first comic issue which was all black except for her green eyes peeking out of her face veil, drawing allusions to the Afghan refugee, Sharbat Gula, who was made famous for her green eyes when she appeared on the      cover      of      National Geographic. Sooraya was also Afghan, and the first pages of the comic showed the ex-American soldier and famous superhero, Wolverine, fight off members of the Taliban to rescue her. A powerful superhero in her own right, Sooraya was unconscious when he found her, reinforcing negative stereotypes of helpless Muslim women in need of saving. Many Muslims welcomed Sooraya’s representation because she was a “good” Muslim amongst a pile of “bad” Muslim characters, who seemed to be growing daily in number as Hollywood embraced terrorism as their go-to enemy. Eager for positive representation, they chose to overlook Sooraya’s problematic representation which went beyond the veil and body-hugging abaya. This extended to superpowers where she transformed nude into sand particles that flayed her opponent alive. Additionally, her alias was “Dust,” which deliberately conjured images of the desert. In the years since Sooraya’s debut, more Muslim superheroes were added to the superhero legion such as the Green Lantern’s Simon Baz, who was arrested and shipped to an offshore penal colony before he was magically freed. However, the most notable of them did not appear until 2014 when the Ms. Marvel series was launched. Originally written by the Muslim convert, G. Willow Wilson, Ms. Marvel’s Kamala Khan painted a nuanced portrait of Islam. She was also an instant hit among readers with her first comic book soaring   to   the   #1   spot   in comic book sales and she remains a popular superhero today. However, this popularity proved to be a double-edged sword because it illustrated the darker implications of Muslim superhero representation. In 2016, a new series named Champions launched with Kamala at the center of it, being compared to Captain America at one point in the series by a fellow superhero. The only problem was that this volume also romanticized the Afghanistan invasion, which was a war that exacerbated factors such as poverty, malnutrition,    and    lack    of    proper    health    care access   among   civilians. In this volume, Kamala convinced her newly formed superhero team to attack a fictional Muslim country to save Muslim girls from terrorists who looked like the Taliban. After attacking the country and “freeing” the Muslim girls there, it became obvious that Kamala was a proxy for white male saviourism much like Wolverine during his rescue of Sooraya. This narrative of saving Afghan women in comics is perplexing when we consider that Afghanistan’s largest feminist group, the Revolutionary Association for the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) vocally opposed U.S. intervention, as seen in a statement on their website on the eve of war with the headline : “Taliban should be overthrown by the uprising of Afghan nation.” Kamala wasn’t the only one found to be fighting the Taliban during the GWOT in American comic books. Sooraya did the same as well in the Young X-Men series. There is no question that the Taliban are a reprehensible group of fundamentalists who terrorize anyone other than themselves. However, it is not a stretch to consider them as an effective method for selling the GWOT to comic book readers throughout this period as the financial cost of the war became higher and the death count of troops climbed. Additionally, storylines that showed Muslim superheroes fighting for American interests promoted exceptional ideas of American culture as inclusive and tolerant of Muslims at a time in American history when they simply were not. As a result, these storylines proved useful for promoting the Global War on Terror, even if that was not the intent of writers like Wilson, who crafted more sensitive representations, making the promotion of Muslim superheroes one of the most intriguing legacies of 9/11.