| I Never Liked You | |
|---|---|
 Cover of the New Definitive second edition of I Never Liked You | |
| Creator | Chester Brown |
| Date | 1994 |
| Publisher | Drawn & Quarterly |
| Original publication | |
| Published in | Yummy Fur |
| Issues | 26–30 |
| Date of publication | October 1991 – April 1993 |
I Never Liked You is a graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. The story first ran between 1991 and 1993 under the title Fuck, in issues #26–30 of Brown's comic book Yummy Fur; published in book form by Drawn & Quarterly in 1994. It deals with the teenage Brown's introversion and difficulty talking to others, especially members of the opposite sex—including his mother. The story has minimal dialogue and is sparsely narrated. The artwork is amongst the simplest in Brown's body of work—some pages consist only of a single small panel.
Brown established his reputation in the early alternative comics scene of the 1980s with the surreal, taboo-breaking Ed the Happy Clown. He brought that story to an abrupt end in 1989 when, excited by the autobiographical comics of Joe Matt and Julie Doucet, he turned towards personal stories. The uncomplicated artwork of his friend and fellow Toronto cartoonist Seth inspired him to simplify his own. Brown intended I Never Liked You as part of a longer work with what became his previous book, The Playboy (1992), but found the larger story too complex to handle at once. I Never Liked You was the last work of Brown's early autobiographical period.
I Never Liked You was well received, and its influence can be found in the work of cartoonists such as Jeffrey Brown, Ariel Schrag and Anders Nilsen. The book appeared amid the early 1990s trend in autobiographical alternative comics, and Brown was one of a prominent trio of Toronto-based autobiographical cartoonists, with Seth and Joe Matt. Brown originally set the panels against black page backgrounds, which he replaced with white for an annotated "New Definitive Edition" in 2002.