“If you can’t love me, who can you love?”

I Never Liked You
Chester Brown
1994
Drawn & Quarterly

Chester Brown is well known in the indie comics community for work that is personal, poignant, and polarizing. Chester initially began professionally making short strips in the early 1980s, mostly focusing on political and social critiques of Western culture, all of which are infused with his signature sense of humour and absurdity in one way or another. You can read about some of them here. In the late 80s and into the early 1990s, like Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Phoebe Gloeckner, fellow Canadian Seth, and many others before him, Brown entered the creative foray of autobiographical comics. How exact these comics are to Brown’s experiences is anyone’s guess, but there is certainly an introspective examination occurring in I Never Liked You.

This book is cold. It’s both familiar to Brown’s previous serial work collected in The Little Man (1998) and Ed The Happy Clown (1989), yet worlds apart. I Never Liked You is a narrative focusing on Brown’s youth, specifically on his adolescence (aka an era prior to his comics career). Brown writes in the backmatter of the book that although he doesn’t specifically label the timeline of when events in the story occur, it all generally takes place during his high school years in the Quebec school system (grades 7 through 11). As is suggested in the title, I Never Liked You delves into Brown’s encounters with love and relationships.

The furthest extent to which Chester expresses emotion. 

I Never Liked You involves a different type of love-shaped relationship. Rather than there being a trifecta of partners, there are three girls that express interest in Chester: Connie, her younger sister Carrie, and Chester’s next door neighbour Sky. Things are certainly awkward for all involved and not simply because Chester is part of a love square (perhaps a rhombus is more appropriate). Chester himself is the major problem here, or at least that’s what Brown suggests in this reflexive tale.

Chester isn’t sure of himself in regards to anything. He’s often asked various questions, ranging from providing his opinion towards something to whether he will accept an invitation to a social outing or not. Both in and outside of his head the “fictionalized” Chester Brown expresses hesitation in everything he does. He is never sure of himself and tends to float freely from experience to experience. Rather than openly express his thoughts and feelings with his family and friends, he internalizes them and often times is apathetic and reserved, resulting in relationships that feel hollow and empty. Brown effectively captures the insecurity and fear that is common amongst youth as they make the transition from childhood into adulthood, as well as the carefree nature that most of us can relate to having had at one time or another. 

This page sums up what Chester thinks about on a regular basis.

Chester is never overly emotional towards anyone or anything. When he tells his neighbour (whom he has been idolizing and fantasizing about for months) that he is in love with her, Chester comes across as strangely uninterested and devoid of emotion. His interactions feel less than stock, like even a computer could give a better response than he does. As I briefly mentioned earlier, I Never Liked You is polarizing in that the character Chester is clearly learning about love, emotional connection, and socializing, but he fails to find the ways to communicate his affections to those he cares about. Chester isn’t sensitive towards other peoples’ emotions either and quietly tramples over top of another prominent characters feelings without even realizing it.

 

Chester having difficulties expressing himself. 

The title is intriguing; is I Never Liked You referring to the obvious (the obvious being Brown referring to one of the other characters in the narrative as You), or does You refer to his younger self? Perhaps it’s a bit of both. Regardless of the answer, Brown doesn’t paint his past with a glossy finish. He also doesn’t melodramatize it either. If the contents of the narrative are to be believed as a representation of Brown’s adolescence, it seems rather mundane and relatable. Whether this is a good thing will vary from reader to reader, but in a comics world overfilled with explosions, punches, and emotionally banal superhero shenanigans, I Never Liked You stands out as being an honest and authentic creation.


Brown’s approach to his memoir is refreshing compared to other (semi-)autobiographical comics. In Robert Crumb’s plethora of material, the reader understands Crumb’s insecurities and anxieties immediately. There is a different affect going on in Crumb’s work; Crumb is not shy with how he presents his emotions on the page and his stories surge with an emotional intelligence that is well realized. I Never Liked You, on the other hand, is foreign in comparison. There are slivers of knowledge that Chester exudes about his teenaged emotional state, but for the most part his feelings allude(d) him. Not only are they a mystery to him, but they are a mystery to us. It’s kind of uncomfortable reading I Never Liked You, yet it’s difficult to put down; I feel as though I’m peering into Brown’s past and eavesdropping when I shouldn’t be.

Another glimpse into Chester's mind.
He chooses to internalize his feelings rather than share them with others.

An important difference between Brown’s and Crumb’s work worth mentioning is that Brown is capturing what he was like as a teenager, whereas most of Crumb’s work features his middle-aged self discussing his then current tribulations. It goes (almost) without saying that the approach to their respective comics both follow a logical demeanour. What I mean by that is that Brown is presenting a younger fictionalized version of himself, so it makes sense that he is awkward and unsure of himself. Meanwhile, middle-aged Crumb is experienced and knows (to a clearer extent at least) who he is and how his mind functions, so his level of expression is more refined and clearly shows in his storytelling. It’s a smart decision on Brown’s part and further enhances the authenticity and rawness captured in recollecting his rocky beginning.

In the end, this is what everyone thinks of Chester.

I Never Liked You is a subtle coming-of-age tale that lets its readers into the formative years of an elusive and underappreciated Canadian comics creator. While the narrative may be an insight into the acclaimed author’s pre-comics creation days, Chester Brown manages to give his readers an inside look into how his brain functions (functioned rather) without removing the mystique that makes Brown so wonderful. I Never Liked You is much tamer than his earlier work, but shows how gracefully a comics creator can mature over the years. It would be a great sadness for you not to pick it up.