Everyone in Cannon’s life seems to need something from her. A shift covered. A problem solved. A favor granted. Lee Lai’s graphic novel explores what happens when a person becomes so reliable that nobody notices how much they’re carrying.

Set in Montreal, the graphic novel follows Lucy, better known by her nickname Cannon, a queer Chinese woman working in a demanding restaurant kitchen while caring for her aging grandfather. Reliable to a fault, Cannon has become the person everyone leans on. Her mother avoids responsibility. Her boss pushes boundaries. Even her closest friend, Trish, takes more than she gives.

What makes the book so compelling is how quietly these pressures accumulate. Lee Lai, whose acclaimed debut Stone Fruit explored similarly complex relationships, excels at capturing the small moments that reveal larger emotional truths. Conversations overlap. Text messages go unanswered. Friendships drift into unhealthy patterns. Nothing seems catastrophic on its own, yet the weight becomes impossible to ignore.

More Than a Coming-of-Age Story

Part of Cannon explores questions of identity, family obligation, and creative ambition. Trish, an aspiring writer, begins drawing from Cannon’s personal experiences for her work, raising uncomfortable questions about friendship and artistic ethics. Meanwhile, Cannon struggles to express her own needs, even as resentment slowly builds beneath the surface.

Lai’s artwork mirrors those tensions beautifully. The mostly black-and-white pages emphasize isolation and routine, while sudden flashes of red punctuate moments of anger, fear, or emotional rupture. Recurring magpies drift through the story as mysterious companions, symbols that feel equally connected to intuition, transformation, and buried emotions.

Learning to Take Up Space

At its heart, Cannon is about the consequences of constantly making yourself smaller for the comfort of others. The story understands that growth rarely arrives through dramatic revelations. More often, it begins with the difficult decision to speak up.

Thoughtful, funny, and emotionally precise, Cannon confirms Lee Lai as one of the most interesting voices currently working in graphic novels. It’s a story about boundaries, loneliness, and self-worth—and about what happens when someone finally refuses to carry the weight alone.