I Never Liked You : A Comic Book - Hardcover

If you ever doubted that a comic book could wrench your heart, I urge you to read I Never Liked You. Chester Brown looks back on his adolescent attempts at relationships--with his friends, his mother, the girl who always loved him--with such maturity and understatement that the result is an unspoken testament to the reality of life. The feeling you're left with after reading this comic is due in part to the skilled, reserved hand of Brown the artist: his comics flow so smoothly through time that once begun, this book is almost impossible to put down. The panels--often a tiny single frame on a page of pure black--convey such a sense of loneliness that in any other medium this story wouldn't be half as good.

Chester Brown is commonly regarded as one of the leading figures of the alternative comics "renaissance" that began in the 1980's.  As a cartoonist, he has produced three regular comic book series, Yummy Fur, Underwater, and Louis Riel, and his work has been collected in four books: Ed The Happy Clown, The Playboy, I Never Liked You, and The Little Man. Throughout his career, Brown's work has been known for its diverse and unpredictable nature. His stories have ranged from the absurd surrealism of Ed the Happy Clown, to the deeply personal, understated autobiographical accounts of his youth, to, more recently, the dada-esque, linguistically-challenged oddness of Underwater. Brown has won two Harvey Awards, for Best Cartoonist and Best Graphic Album