"The little dinosaur with the big attitude." That's how CMX editor Jim Chadwick described the title character in Gon, the classic manga that CMX will be releasing in a new edition beginning next month.

The only regular character in the series, Gon is a mischievous dinosaur who pops up all over the world to start trouble with the native animals. There are no people in these manga and no dialogue, just wordless stories of Gon hitching a ride on the back of a lion or adopting a litter of orphaned puppies. Artist Mashashi Tanaka renders his adventures in detailed pen-and-ink drawings without using screentones or sound effects.

"Gon has no romance or complicated stories," said Asako Suzuki, CMX director of manga. "It's just about a little dinosaur who is an observer of the wilderness."

"He lives in this age when all the other dinosaurs are gone, but man has yet to appear," said Chadwick. "He is a bit of a troublemaker, but he also has a strong sense of fair play. If he thinks someone is going to be bullied, he makes it his business to take care of the bully."

Although the cover image shows Gon as a cute, orange, big-eyed dinosaur, he's anything but cuddly. The manga originally ran in Morning, a seinen (young men's) magazine in Japan, and the stories include realistic violence. "It's nature," said Chadwick. "There's innocent little creatures, and there's really nasty predators, and when they attack, it's just like in nature. He [Tanaka] doesn't pretty it up or make it cute." For that reason, CMX decided to put a teen rating on the book.

DC's Paradox Press first published Gon in the U.S. in 1995. The volume, titled Gon Swimming, won an Eisner award and was nominated for a Harvey in 1998, in both cases as best U.S. edition of foreign material. CMX's rerelease fits solidly into the recent trend of republishing older licensed manga in updated editions. In May Del Rey began a new edition of Parasyte, a sci-fi manga originally published by Tokyopop, and later this year Viz plans to issue new editions of Junji Ito's horror manga Gyo and Uzumaki under its Signature imprint. Reflecting current tastes, the new editions are printed in the original Japanese right-to-left format, unlike the earlier U.S. editions, which were flipped.

For the new edition of Gon, Suzuki and Chadwick restored the original arrangement of the stories from the Japanese volumes, which had been rearranged thematically by Paradox editor Andy Helfer. The new series will have seven volumes released quarterly, beginning in July. With a lower page count than most manga and no translation or lettering costs to recoup, Gon is priced at $5.99, well below the standard $9.99 price for CMX titles.