Teresa, an Italian girl in her early 20s, gets a job in Berlin as a scientific assistant to prepare an exhibit on King Tut’s treasure. There, she meets the bohemian Ruben and the two begin a whirlwind romance. Also, the story of Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb. And the two are connected… buh?
I was a bit puzzled as to why Manuele Fior would contrast the two stories of an unremarkable romance at the end of the 1990s with the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in the 1920s - they don’t really mesh naturally, thematically or otherwise, and feel awkward together. Neither are compelling to read as well making this a confusing and often dull comic.
There’s the superficial connections: Teresa’s preparing an exhibit on the famous pharaoh, and she’s an insomniac who takes St John’s Wort, aka hypericum (hence the title), and the yellow flower is found in the Egyptian tomb as well. But these are tenuous connections at best and you could have easily excised one storyline without affecting the other - so why have both, other than for padding?
Teresa and Ruben’s romance is straightforward. She’s a dreary girl, he’s a poseur dweeb living off his dad’s money while pretending to be an artist. They meet, have sex, fight a little, etc. - standard relationship stuff with nothing to make it stand out as memorable. The Howard Carter parts are simply a retelling of what happened in 1922.
All of the book looks good but the Carter parts of the comic look especially amazing with Fior showing off his artistic skills painting beautiful scenes of Egypt pre-mass tourism. There’s not a great deal to know about Carter’s expedition but you get a good sense of what happened, so the book is informative in that regard.
A boring read about a mundane romance and pointless flashbacks to yesteryear, having great art and a semblance of history isn’t enough to make Manuele Fior’s Hypericum worth going out of your way to check out.
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