Yves Schlirf, Belgian comic book publisher and pioneer of French-speaking manga, has died

The Belgian comic book publisher Yves Schlirf, a director of Dargaud and founder of Kana editions, a great architect of the explosion of Japanese manga in French-speaking countries with bestsellers like “Naruto”, died on Saturday, these companies announced on Sunday in a press release.

Yves Schlirf, who did not reveal his age but had worked in comics for around fifty years, was the general director of Dargaud editions for Belgium and the editorial director of Dargaud Benelux and Blake and Mortimer editions.

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“Sense of the public”

In 1996, after multiple trips to Japan, he founded Kana, a publishing house specializing in manga. This label, created within Dargaud, has released a number of heavyweights of the genre in French-speaking countries, including “Naruto”, “Saint Seiya”, “Detective Conan”, “Slam Dunk”, “Hunter X Hunter” and “Yu-Gi-Oh!”!

A former bookseller in Brussels, Yves Schlirf had a “feel for the public” which made him “a publisher in tune with the major popular series”, underlined Dargaud and Kana, praising “his flair, combined with an insatiable curiosity”.

On the Franco-Belgian comics side, Yves Schlirf was the editor of the successful series “XIII”, created in the 1980s and written by his friend Jean Van Hamme. He also supervised the “Blake and Mortimer” series, revived after the death in 1987 of Edgar P. Jacobs, who had created it in 1946.

“Yves Schlirf was still preparing an anniversary album for the 80th anniversary of “Blake and Mortimer” around secondary characters from the series,” underlined Dargaud and Kana.

As editorial director of Dargaud Benelux, he accompanied “the best-sellers Pin-Up (Yann and Berthet), Murena (Dufaux and Delaby), Le Scorpion (Desberg and Marini), La Complainte des landes perdus (Dufaux and Rosinski) and many others,” according to the press release.