This article analyses three comics series: writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Tony Harris’ Ex Machina (August 2004–August 2010); writer Brian Wood and artist Riccardo Burchielli’s DMZ (November 2005–February 2012); and writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson’s The Boys (October 2006–November 2012). Taking literary critic Laura Frost’s concept of ‘archifictions’ as its starting point, the article discusses how these series frame the September 11 attacks on New York and their aftermath, but its primary concern is with their engagement with the larger social ramifications of 9/11 and with the War on Terror, and with how this engagement is rooted in and centred on Ground Zero. It argues that this rooting allows these comics’ creators to critique post-9/11 US culture and foreign policy, but that it also, ultimately, serves to disarm the critique that each series voices in favour of closure through recourse to recuperative architecture.