Yves Schlirf, the Brussels bookseller who went on to found the manga publisher Kana, died on September 13. Dargaud and Kana announced his death the following day [1]. At the time he was still director-general of Dargaud in Belgium and editorial director at Dargaud Benelux, more than fifty years after opening one of the city’s first comic book shops.
Yves Schlirf and Franco-Belgian Publishing
The announcements appeared on Dargaud’s website and on Kana’s X account [1]. For French-speaking manga readers, Kana is a household name: Anime News Network singles out its French editions of Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho, Saint Seiya and Monster, and its catalog also includes Death Note, Hunter × Hunter and Detective Conan [1]. For Franco-Belgian comics, Schlirf’s name sits behind a run of Dargaud bestsellers.
In their commemorative tribute, Dargaud and Kana noted that Schlirf leaves the image of a great connoisseur of the 9th art and its language. The “9th art” is the French term for comics, from the traditional list of the arts [1]. The statement went on to describe “a man deeply convinced by the mechanisms of fiction and human adventure, truly passionate about comics” [2].
That description fits the shape of his career, which moved from the shop counter to the marketing office to the editor’s desk without ever leaving comics. Few publishing executives have sold as many albums by hand as Yves Schlirf did.
Schlirfbook and the Brussels Comic Scene
Yves Schlirf was born in Brussels, Belgium, growing up within the historic heart of European comic production. Brussels is the capital of Belgian comics, the city of Hergé and of the weekly Tintin magazine, and Schlirf started where the readers were: in retail [1].
In 1972 he opened Schlirfbook, one of the first specialist comic book stores in Brussels [1]. At the time, most comics were still bought at newsstands or in general bookshops; a shop devoted entirely to them was a bet on readers who wanted more than the latest issue of a weekly magazine.
He kept the shop for three decades, well into his publishing career, and only sold it in 2002 to focus on publishing [1].
That overlap is unusual. For twenty years Yves Schlirf was both a bookseller and a publishing professional, seeing from behind the till how the albums he helped sell actually sold.
Dupuis Marketing and Dargaud Expansion
Yves Schlirf later diversified and showed active interest in professional publishing during the 1980s, stepping beyond retail operations into large-scale production. His first job in the industry was in the marketing department of Dupuis, the Belgian publisher of Spirou, at the request of its then director general, Jean Van Hamme [1]. Van Hamme is better known as a writer: he co-created Thorgal and Largo Winch and wrote XIII, a series that would later pass through Schlirf’s hands at Dargaud.
When Van Hamme stepped down as director general, Schlirf left Dupuis too [1]. He then created the Belgian branch of Dargaud in Brussels, giving the Paris-based publisher a base in the country that had produced so much of Franco-Belgian comics’ talent [1].
The bestsellers he oversaw there were mostly long-running series for older readers, with high production values: the kind of album that keeps selling for decades rather than a season.
Some have outlived their original creators: XIII and Murena both continue with new artists at the drawing board.
Kana Manga Imprint and European Bestsellers
At the Belgian branch of Dargaud publishing in Brussels, Schlirf oversaw an extraordinary roster of bestselling titles that dominated European sales charts. The bestsellers ANN lists give a sense of his taste: Pin-Up by Yann and Philippe Berthet, Murena by Jean Dufaux and Philippe Delaby, Le Scorpion by Stephen Desberg and Enrico Marini, The Lament of the Lost Moors (La Complainte des landes perdues) by Dufaux with Grzegorz Rosinski and later Delaby, and Van Hamme’s XIII [1]. Historical drama, Roman intrigue, thrillers and dark fantasy, drawn in painstaking detail.
His other legacy is Kana, the manga label he founded within the Dargaud group in 1996 [2]. France was already on its way to becoming the biggest manga market outside Japan, and Kana grew into one of its leading publishers, with a catalog that took in some of the best-selling shōnen of the 2000s. French readers who met Naruto, Light Yagami or Gon Freecss for the first time did so in Kana’s editions. Its Detective Conan volumes have followed a series that is still going in Japan decades later, recently with its first two-hour TV special in ten years.
Running both Kana and Dargaud Benelux meant Schlirf worked on two sides of a divide that French-language publishing took years to bridge: Franco-Belgian albums on one side, Japanese manga on the other [1]. He published both from the same city, and by the end of his career French bookshops stacked them side by side.
Blake and Mortimer 80th Anniversary Project
Before his death, Schlirf remained actively engaged in major editorial initiatives, directing his energy toward milestone European comic heritage. He was working on an album for the 80th anniversary of Blake and Mortimer, the Belgian series first published in 1946 [1]. Edgar P. Jacobs created it for the weekly Tintin magazine, and its mix of espionage and science fiction made it one of the pillars of post-war Belgian comics.
Jacobs died in 1987, and the series was revived in 1996 with The Francis Blake Affair, written by none other than Jean Van Hamme. Since then, rotating creative teams have kept it going, and each new album is scrutinized by readers who grew up on the originals. An anniversary edition carries even more weight.
Neither publisher has said what will happen to that album now. It is a fitting last project for Yves Schlirf all the same: a book for readers of a 1946 series, prepared by a man who opened a comic shop in 1972 and spent the rest of his life making sure the next generation had something to read, whether it came from Brussels or Tokyo [2].
- ONLINE NEWS Anime News Network. (2026, September 21). French Publisher Kana’s Founder Yves Schlirf Dies. Anime News Network. [Article Link]
- ONLINE NEWS Anime News Network Newsroom. (2026, September 21). French Publisher Kana’s Founder Yves Schlirf Dies. Anime News Network. [Article Link]
