Brown established his reputation in the early alternative comics scene of the 1980s with the surreal, taboo-breaking Ed the Happy Clown.

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 well received, and its influence can be found in the work of cartoonists such as Jeffrey Brown, Ariel Schrag and Anders Nilsen.

Brown originally set the panels against black page backgrounds, which he replaced with white for an annotated "New Definitive Edition" in 2002.

After making a name for himself in alternative comics with the surreal serial Ed the Happy Clown, Brown turned to autobiography[6] under the influence of the work of Julie Doucet and Joe Matt.

During his autobiographical period, Brown gradually simplified his style, inspired by the example of his friend and fellow Toronto cartoonist Seth.

[8] Brown had switched publishers to the Montreal-based Drawn & Quarterly by the time he completed his first autobiographical graphic novel, The Playboy, in 1992.

He and Carrie's older sister Connie, a bossy blonde a year his senior, often hide during hide-and-seek games in tall grass where they spend the time talking with each other, though they have little in common.

[13] A "New Definitive Edition" appeared in 2002, with two added pages of contextual endnotes,[6] something he had been increasingly doing from 1995 with his cartoon essay "My Mom Was a Schizophrenic".

This is not made explicit,[21] but hinted at in scenes where she approaches awkward subjects with Chet and his brother Gord; the boys' unsupportive responses feed the discomfort.

[19] Brown addresses his mother's mental health in his 1995 cartoon essay "My Mom Was a Schizophrenic", in which he takes an anti-psychiatric stance.

[15] Reviewer C. Max Magee found the tone of awkwardness and emotional emptiness comparable to works by contemporaries such as Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware.

[31] Backgrounds establish the mood of a scene, harmonizing or contrasting with the action—as when Chet and Connie return from the movies amongst a romantic snow-covered, starry landscape, against an awkward silence accentuated by panel that grow, making the figures appear ever more insignificant.

[32] Certain inanimate objects receive a focus imbuing them with special significance, such as Chet's habitual after-school package of soda crackers or the Brown family home—a house that, to reviewer Darcy Sullivan, "is as much a character [in I Never Liked You] as in The Playboy".

[7] Upon the serial's conclusion, reviewer Darcy Sullivan called it "a major step forward for the artist, a leading light in adult comics".

[13] American cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez hailed The Playboy and I Never Liked You as "probably the best graphic novels next to Maus";[36] British cartoonist Eddie Campbell called them "the most sensitive comics ever made";[37] and American comics writer Heidi MacDonald called I Never Liked You "a masterpiece" that is "the equal of any 'coming of age' movie".

[38] Charles Hatfield praised Brown's honesty, keen observation, and narrative strength,[17] and called the "hide with me"[39] page as one of his favourites.

[28] Critic Óscar Palmer [es] described the work as "an example of sobriety and restraint, and one of the harshest, most hopeless teenage portraits ... in any medium".

[40] Alongside Seth's It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken and Joe Matt's The Poor Bastard—works by Brown's Toronto-based friends and Drawn & Quarterly stablemates—I Never Liked You is seen as a prominent example of the 1990s autobiographical comics trend.

In 2011 Brown returned to autobiography and his relations with women with the graphic novel Paying for It, a polemic arguing for the decriminalization of prostitution.