With Viz running out of things to do with the Dragon Ball manga (monthly releases, large graphic novels, smaller graphic novels, “Viz Big” omnibus editions, collector’s edition hardcovers, box sets…), it only makes sense that they would find some other way to exploit one of their best franchises. Coming out mid-2009, the new “Chapter Books” under the “Viz Kids” label seem to be something along the lines of… well… we do not quite know. Manga is already mostly pictures, so how do you “kid-ify” that even more? Perhaps it will be very simple words with the occasional illustration?

These see a release beginning 04 August 2009 with the first two volumes, and then on 01 September 2009 with the next two volumes. They are priced at $4.99, so do not expect a whole lot out of these.