ways people are shaped by their environment" in Brown's autobiographical work, and believes the stories demonstrate "the urgency of Justin Green and the mundane particularity of Harvey Pekar", two influential creators known for their revealing autobiographical comics. Brown is unsparing in his depictions of social awkwardness of his teenage years. Despite the 1970s adolescent backdrop, sex and drugs are absent; his life is shaped by his strictly religious parents and introversion. Brown's mother (1923–76) had schizophrenia. This is not made explicit, but hinted at in scenes where she approaches awkward subjects with Chet and his brother Gord; the boys' unsupportive responses feed the discomfort. 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. Chet's face is near expressionless throughout. The characters are distanced from the reader, inviting neither empathy nor identification. To cartoonist and critic Pepo Pérez, this is a challenge to readers to understand the characters. In the appendix to the "New Definitive Edition", Brown declares the dialogue is filtered through his memory and likely did not occur as recorded, and that locations and other details are also subject to lapses of memory. To academic Elisabeth El Refaie this transparency on Brown's part is "a deeper and more sincere form of authenticity". Reviewer C. Max Magee found the tone of awkwardness and emotional emptiness comparable to works by contemporaries such as Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware. The story unfolds in vignettes, with little setup or context given to any scene. To Hatfield, they "[pop] out of nowhere as a dreamlike series of pulses ... The effect is sometimes eerie ... despite the grounding of the story in mundane everyday stuff." Unlike in his previous graphic novel, The Playboy, Brown makes limited use of a narrator in I Never Liked You. The story is told almost entirely through its pictures and sparse dialogue. The page layouts are also sparse, sometimes limited to a single, small panel on a page, sometimes up to seven or eight. The layout and repetition of panels affects pacing, slowing or quickening scene. Brown abandoned the grid layout he had used in earlier works for more varied, organic layouts. 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