Captain America and Superman fight for truth and justice as they have for decades, but they've questioned the U.S. government more often since the start of the War on Terror in 2001.

Superheroes since the 2000s have increasingly held up a mirror to controversies like mass surveillance, remote killings using drones and the “with us or against us” mentality espoused by former President George W. Bush. Misuse of military technology also played a key role in recent movie adaptations featuring Batman, Spider-Man, Captain America and Iron Man, showing how fighting dirty to defeat evil can make America its own worst enemy.

Before the terrorist attacks of 2001, great comics – such as Frank Miller’s “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” and Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” – reflected a grittier side of American power. But the War on Terror “prompted comic books to take a more global view of the world,” says Axel Alonso, editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics.

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“It provoked comics that used metaphor to comment on the United States’ uncertain place in the world,” Alonso says. “The best comics take a look at the issues outside your window. We don’t take sides and we avoid raw politics. We focus more on ethics.”

The premiere of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” on Friday is a prime example of Captain America’s unique role taking on current events after being created in the 1940s to rally support against the Nazis. Captain America fought jihadist terrorists in the early 2000s, but at the same time fought anti-Islamic racism fanned by the World Trade Center attacks, Alonso says.

“'Cap' is not pro-government, he is pro-U.S.,” Alonso says. “He is about doing what he thinks is right for the people.”

Marvel brought its entire comic universe into that commentary in 2006 with its “Civil War” series, inspired by the inescapable destruction of the World Trade Center near its New York City office and the perpetual security in the city that followed, Alonso says.

“Much of the public debate around that time was, ‘How much of your civil liberties are you willing to give up for your security?’” Alonso says. “Many of us were riding on trains having our bags inspected by soldiers. We were in constant ‘orange alert’ in New York. That discussion was the seed for what became ‘Civil War.’”

Sacrificing liberty for security is the “with us or against us” challenge given to the superheroes of the Marvel universe in the "Civil War" series, as the destruction of a school by supervillains leads the government to pass a law requiring superpowered people to unmask themselves to the government as lethal weapons. This tore the superhero world apart, with Captain America leading resistance and claiming infringement on civil liberties, and Iron Man supporting the government by helping them to imprison rebel heroes in a parallel dimension in the name of public safety. That story does not have a happy ending, and neither does political feuding.

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Rather than take one side, Alonso says he and the Marvel team represented both sides of the security and civil liberties debate equally.

“Iron Man’s methods may not have been ethical … [but] Iron Man might see a long-term game to be played, political or otherwise,” Alonso says.

Also in 2006, “Superman Returns” raised eyebrows when a character in the film asked if Superman stood for “truth, justice – all that stuff” instead of the rest of his motto, "the American Way.”

The ethical challenges of mass surveillance additionally were a major feature of “The Dark Knight,” and privacy advocate Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., even made a cameo in the Batman film. Batman movies starring Christian Bale also showed a healthy distrust of the military-industrial complex, as he battled executives that made Wayne Enterprises into a weapons company.

A major dose of realism the War on Terror brought to comics is that superheroes can’t save everybody – but they’re heroes because they try. The first comic about New York native Spider-Man published after the World Trade Center attacks showed Spidey walking through the destruction of the towers and helping rescuers find survivors in the debris.