Yves Schlirf

Yves Schlirf was born in Uccle, then in the Belgian province of Brabant, on 15 April in the early 1950s. Reliable secondary sources (BD Gest', local Brussels comics histories) fix the day and month; Wikidata and Francophone death notices treat 1950 and age 76 as the working year.

As a teenager he spent time in Jean-Marie Brouyere's studio with Bernard Yslaire. He wanted a life in bande dessinee but concluded he was neither draughtsman nor scenarist. Bookselling became the practical way to stay inside the medium.

In 1972 he opened Schlirfbook in Brussels, among the first shops in Belgium devoted to comics. The shop issued ex-libris and merchandise, hosted a tiny gallery of originals, and became a meeting place for authors and collectors. With Eric Coune of The Skull he helped organise comics festivals.

He kept the shop until 2002, when he sold it to concentrate on editing. Thirty years as a retailer left him with an unusually sharp sense of what readers actually bought.

Before Dargaud, Schlirf published under small Belgian labels. Crocodile Edition issued Marc Wasterlain volumes and Andre Geerts' first album. Later came Moebius and Smolderen's Les Carnets voles du Major (1983), Schuiten and Peeters' Le Mystere d'Urbicande (1985), and Sadoul's Franquin interview book (1986).

From 1980 he wrote for Spirou under Alain De Kuyssche, including author features and the Schlirfographie column. He also artistic-directed the Tip-top fanzine in the 1970s.

Jean Van Hamme recruited him into Dupuis promotion in 1987. When Van Hamme left the house, Schlirf left too. He scouted informally for Jacques Glenat and in 1989 served as Numa Sadoul's deputy on Les Cahiers de la bande dessinee, then stepped back for lack of Belgian editorial openings at Glenat.

Dargaud hired him as a literary director; he was then charged with creating Dargaud Benelux in Brussels so that Jean Van Hamme and William Vance's XIII could be published through a Belgian structure. Schlirf became the series' Belgian editor and later editorial director of the Benelux catalogue, working with Berthet, Delaby, Marini, Meyer, Vance and others.

Hits under his watch included Pin-Up, Murena, Le Scorpion and La Complainte des landes perdues. For XIII's climax he obtained an extra Van Hamme scenario drawn by Jean Giraud that shipped with Vance's album, each at 500,000 copies.

Repeated trips to Japan convinced Schlirf that manga needed a dedicated Francophone house inside Dargaud. He founded Kana in 1996 (some references give 1997). The list that followed defined a generation: Naruto, Saint Seiya, Detective Conan, Slam Dunk, Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter x Hunter, Yu-Gi-Oh, Shaman King, Monster, and later the Made in Japan art line opened by Taniguchi's Le Sommet des dieux.

By 2007 he was credited with 16 of the year's 50 bestselling comics across Kana and Dargaud Benelux. French obituaries after his death repeatedly framed him as the man who made Naruto readable in French.

After Media Participations acquired the Jacobs estate, Claude de Saint-Vincent chose Schlirf to rebuild Blake et Mortimer as a living franchise. From 2009 as editorial director he multiplied writer-artist teams while guarding tone and quality. Dargaud said he was still preparing an 80th-anniversary album focused on secondary characters when he died.

Schlirf lived and worked in Brussels. Dargaud's death notice named his partner, Corine Jamar, and their daughters Eleni and Athina. Colleagues described him as a teacher of editors as much as a deal-maker, mentoring women who later launched series such as Les Vieux Fourneaux, Le Loup en slip, Undertaker and Jours de sable under his watch.

Yves Schlirf died suddenly on Saturday 12 September 2026. Dargaud and Kana announced the news; Belga, La Libre, Livres Hebdo, Le Monde, Le Figaro, BFMTV and ActuaBD carried obituaries within a day. No medical cause was published in the house communique.

Tributes from Japan Expo, Urban Comics, ADN and large fan accounts stressed Kana's catalogue and his dual role in Franco-Belgian bestsellers and manga.

Schlirf's legacy sits in shop queues as much as in organigrams: readers who never heard his name still grew up on XIII, Blake et Mortimer continuations and Kana manga. He bridged retailer instinct and group publishing, and he bet early that Japanese comics belonged in the same cultural space as Spirou and Jacobs.

French Wikipedia, BD Gest' and the trade press now record him as founder of Kana and a central Media Participations comics executive in Belgium.

• Founder of Kana (1996)
• Editorial director, Dargaud Benelux
• Editorial director, Editions Blake et Mortimer (from 2009)
• Deputy director-general for Belgium, Dargaud (from 2018)
• Long-time Brussels comics bookseller (Schlirfbook, 1972-2002)
• Prefaced Patrick Gaumer's William Vance monograph (2023)

Le Soir profiled him in 2008 as the man behind 16 of 50 comics bestsellers. After his death, La Libre / Belga, Livres Hebdo, Le Monde, Le Parisien, BFMTV, ActuaBD and Dargaud's own site framed the same arc: bookseller, XIII editor, Blake et Mortimer steward, Kana founder.