I NEVER LIKED YOU 313
Th e Hulk has long been a pivotal character in the Marvel universe, symbolizing
the juxtaposition of American aggressiveness and diversity, with a propensity for
self-destruction and anti-intellectualism, mirroring the best and most problematic
elements of our society. His carnivalesque body marks him as a grotesque grappling
with ideas about American foreign policy that overreaches its boundaries and explodes
into the world.
Selected Bibliography: Christiansen, Jeff , et al. World War Hulk, Gamma Files.
New York: Marvel Comics, 2007; Kirby, Jack and Stan Lee, et al. Th e Incredible Hulk,
Transformations. New York: Marvel Comics. 2001.
Stuart Lenig
I NEVER LIKED YOU is an intimate and aff ecting autobiography by the Canadian artist
Chester Brown (1960–), originally serialized as Fuck in the issues #26–30 (1991– 93)
of his comic book Yummy Fur , but further revised for the book edition (Drawn Quar-
terly, 1994 & its reprint of 2002). Brown has produced two long narratives about his
troubled teens in Châteaugauy, a suburb of the Canadian city of Montreal, but each
stands on its on: Th e Playboy (1992) deals with his adolescent obsession with the
famous men’s magazine, while I Never Liked You deals with Brown’s emotional and
social coming-of-age at home and among his peer group. Key topics include trying to
cope with bullying classmates and with uneasy feelings such as shame, jealousy, a crush
on the girl-next-door, and so on. For critic Charles Hatfi eld, Brown’s memoirs treat
ordinary, everyday encounters as occasions for the deepest questioning. Behind the
quite ordinary teen problems looms, indeed, a deeper human tragedy: the gradual men-
tal breakdown of his schizophrenic mother and Chester’s inability to express explicitly
his love at her deathbed. Such gripping scenes are depicted with the same discreet reti-
cence as the more innocent scenes. Brown’s drawing style is light and minimalist, but the
corporal and facial expressions are revealing in their subtlety. Indeed, silence in I Never
Liked You can say as much as the dialogue; moreover, characters often say things— like
the title of the comic — that they do not really mean.
Brown’s small, fragile drawings are the only bulbs of light in the dark environment of
the black plates. Such a page layout stresses the fact that the author off ers only carefully
selected pieces of his youth, but almost every scene plunges the reader into teenage
angst. Nevertheless, even at the most dramatic stages Brown refrains from cheap eff ects,
instead he off ers the readers enough elements to experience the complexity of the
situation and its emotional charge. Despite the fragmented narration and the jumps
in time, the sequences seem to fl ow with remarkable ease and turn out to be internally
very cohesive. Th is narrative structure is a consequence of Brown’s creation process, in
which he fi rst envisions the individual scenes he wants to include, then modifi es them as
the narrative unfolds. Th e rather serious tone of I Never Liked You also includes some
gentle humor; the 30-something Brown can clearly relativize various things that seri-
ously worried him as a teenager. On the other hand, some painful events—especially
