Award-winning cartoonist Lee Lai’s new graphic novel, Cannon is gorgeous with astonishing story complexity. New to Lai’s work, I decided to first check out her debut, Stone Fruit, and our review of it, and upon finishing, I quickly dove into Cannon. Fans of Stone Fruit won’t be disappointed; the two books share themes of queer identity, troubled relationships, family obligation, and mental health struggles.
Lai is a master of the graphic novel form, and her new book follows Lucy, nicknamed Cannon by her coworkers as a joke—she’s not known to lose her cool in the restaurant kitchen where she works as a cook—ironic as she is struggling with her mental health, trying to manage it by going for runs while listening to mindfulness audio tracks. She’s also dealing with her gung gung’s declining health, and her mother’s avoidance of getting involved to help. Meanwhile, her relationship with her lifelong friend is strained, who unbeknownst to her, is using Cannon’s family drama as source material for her writing. The drawings are beautifully rendered, eliciting depth and texture to this rich story, full of tension and truth, pain and poignancy.
Rachel León
One thing I love about graphic novels—and this is something you’re particularly good at—is the illustration of poignant moments that might not translate as well in prose, which depends on words, whereas the illustrations allow for silence, which is so much more cutting, and true. I don’t know much about the mechanics of graphic novels, but is it fair to say that silence is in your toolkit as a graphic novelist?
Lee Lai
It’s funny because I spend so much time lamenting all the restrictions of cartooning, especially if I’m reading particularly dextrous and skillful prose novels. But it’s true that the visual medium allows for a more specific kind of silence than prose. ‘Cutting’ is a nice word for it. I like to think a lot about pacing and pauses when I’m writing: there’s a strategic moment when I’m translating my written script (formatted loosely like a screenplay) into panels, and there’s a lot to say about how the comic format enables certain storytelling devices that I think are unique to the medium. A pause-panel before a character says something can make the delivery of that line that much more loaded. Also important is whether an emotional moment falls at the end of a two-page spread, or at the first moment of a page-turn. It’s nice to think about how to guide a reader across a spread—do I want them to race through the sequence, or linger in a moment? As a teenager I read an interview with Craig Thompson talking about how he wanted his comics to ‘breathe’, and I still think about this all the time.
Rachel León
I’d love to talk about transitions in the graphic novel form, in this book specifically. One that’s incredibly sharp is when we go from a blister on Cannon’s foot to fish cooking. Are those hard to come up with? They feel so seamless, so I’m curious if they come to you as naturally as they seem.
Lee Lai
Transitions are so fun to play with! One of the main priorities for deciding which scenes to pair together—and how and where they would begin and end—was hoping to create a particular soundscape. Considering so much of the book was about ratcheting up Cannon’s emotional distress (sorry, Cannon), I wanted the transitions to be a little jarring where relevant. Quiet moments smash-cut to something loud and invasive, like the bandaid to the searing fish.
Rachel León
I also loved the subtlety of the birds throughout this book, which carry this mysterious ominous feeling until we realize they’re almost an incarnation or manifestation of Cannon’s mental health struggles. It’s an effective motif, and yet I’m wondering: why birds?
Lee Lai
I chose magpies because they have such a myriad of meanings, which makes them a fun motif to play with. In a lot of western traditions they’re a harbinger of doom or ill-luck, while in Chinese culture they represent joy and connection. I began thinking about magpies as a manifestation of Cannon’s anger, but the more I talked about the concept with loved ones, the more it shifted slightly to be about intuition (conveniently, magpies are one of the few animals that are capable of self-recognition). Arguably, in the right context, those things go hand in hand.
Rachel León
I love how elaborately layered this story is. There are a lot of different threads, and one that was perhaps the most compelling to me was Trish’s use of Cannon’s family as story fodder. There is a scene with her (white) writing mentor discussing Trish’s identity as gay and Chinese, and how literary institutions want that “piece of cultural niche,” and being excited “for what [she] represents.” Trish’s response is one of disgust, and the mentor reminds her it’s money. That, as well as the toll her mining Cannon’s life takes on their friendship says interesting things about a life of art-making, amid capitalism. Can you speak to that?
Lee Lai
There’s so much more to say about this than is easy to fit in a succinct answer, but yes, that thread was a nod to conversations I’ve had with friends for years now, about what it means to exist in a creative industry so steeped in neoliberal notions of ‘diversity,’ as an artist whose experience checks specific ‘identity’ boxes. The discomfort of having one’s work categorized and marketed in certain ways, and ultimately consenting to that because we want to pay the bills at the end of the day. It is money and there’s very few easy answers about how to make it, and art, in an uncomplicated way. All artists mine their own experiences in order to make things, and the ethical and emotional questions that process brings up weigh heavily on almost everyone I know. I don’t think there’s easy answers or tidy points to be made here, but in writing these moments I did want to create an uncomfortable self-awareness, both in myself and perhaps in the reader, about what it means to participate in all of this as creators and consumers.
Rachel León
One of the things I love most about your work is your depictions of the imperfections of relationships. I’d go so far as to say that all relationships have imperfections—I mean, we’re all imperfect people, so we’re going to hurt and disappoint the people in our lives at some point. There’s this futility and frustration in your depictions of relationships—whether familial, platonic, or romantic—that feels really honest to me, and strikes me as perhaps the biggest theme in your work. And there’s a realness to these relationships that goes deeper than many traditional novels. I’m curious if this is another example of you using this form and devices in a graphic novelist’s toolkit to leverage tension and loneliness?
Lee Lai
I agree that all relationships are imperfect! And it makes for fun writing. I’m very grateful to my partner, friends, and roommates for talking about characters so much with me—I like to call it gossiping. It helps me understand what real-life instances (if they exist) I’m actually drawing from, and how they’re being transformed to describe a particular feeling or push the story forward. Those choices aren’t always obvious to me as I’m making them, and chatting about them helps me decide how loosely or tightly I want to hold the concepts.
Since I’m a total novice at writing in any form other than cartooning, I’m not confident I have good perspective on what devices are those that are available to a prose writer, and what exists only in visual craft. The book was conceived and set in pre-pandemic times, but the majority of the writing and drawing happened during the pandemic years and I’m sure that has affected the ways in which loneliness might have seeped into the visuals and the writing. I do think all these relational experiences—resentment, infatuation, dependence, alienation and fear of loneliness—work well when they’re being revealed with words and images together, and not relying too heavily on either. The tricky part is figuring out the details of how to do that, and taking care of the characters at the same time.
GRAPHIC NOVEL
Cannon
By Lee Lai
Drawn and Quarterly
Published September 9, 2025
