The rise in popularity in recent times of dystopian fiction (particularly
among young adults) is reflective of contemporary anxieties about law: the inhumanity
of judicial-coercive machinery; the influence of corporate power; the lack of
democratic imagination despite the desperate need for political reform; and the
threat of order imposed through violence and victimisation. These dystopian texts
often tell fear-inducing stories of law’s failure to protect; or of law’s unsuccessful
struggle against unbridled power; or even sometimes of law’s ‘bastardised’ reconstruction.
Indeed comics, with their visual and narrative intricacies, thrive on dystopia
as a key vehicle for contributing to collective notions of fear and trembling
about the future. Yet, at the same time, these texts also contain within them the
blueprints for hope—the idea that with transformation, heroic intervention, and/or
faith in ‘justice’, the law will ultimately prevail. Law’s ability to be transformed is
thus simultaneously portrayed as society’s downfall (when manipulated and disrupted),
AND as the key to enlivening humanity (when redeemed and restored).
This article attempts to understand this schismatic role of law as presented in the
recent dystopian comic book series From Above by Australian creator Craig Bruyn.
In this series set in futuristic Melbourne, where law has given way to an unaccountable
corporate rule, the social divide is made manifest by the absence of
‘order’, ‘law’ and ‘justice’ in certain segments of society, and yet hope in law’s
return is ever-present. The paper will interrogate expectations of law and justice that
is mediated through the complex interactio

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