| Company type | Comic book store,art gallery |
|---|---|
| Industry | Comic books,art |
| Founded | November 8, 1968; 56 years ago (1968-11-08)[1] |
| Founder | Kees Kousemaker |
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Kees Kousemaker and Evelien Willems Klaas Knol Bas Van der Zee Boris Kousemaker |
| Products | Comic books |
| Website | lambiek |
Galerie Lambiek is a Dutchcomic book store and art gallery inAmsterdam, founded on November 8, 1968[2] by Kees Kousemaker (Steenbergen [nl],(1942-01-25)January 25, 1942 –Bussum, April 27, 2010(2010-04-27) (aged 68)). His son Boris Kousemaker has been the owner since 2007. From 1968 to 2015, it was located in the Kerkstraat, but in November 2015, the store moved to Koningsstraat 27.[3] As of 2018, Lambiek is the oldest comics store in Europe,[4] and the oldest worldwide still in existence.[5][6]
The name "Lambiek" originated as a misspelling of the name of the comics' characterLambik, from the popularSuske & Wiske comic book series created byBelgian artistWilly Vandersteen.[7] The logo of the shop is an image from theSuske en Wiske albumPrinses Zagemeel (Princess Sawdust).[8]
Only two earlier comic bookstores are known to have opened their doors on the North-American continent (or anywhere else on the world for that matter) prior to the one founded by Kousemaker; George Henderson's Canadian, Toronto-based Memory Lane Books opened in May 1967,[9] (itself a continuation of the Viking Bookshop he had already opened on another city location in the spring of 1966[10]), followed byGary Arlington's San Francisco Comic Book Company, which was established in April 1968 in the US namesake city,[11] Making Lambiek the worldwide third-oldest comic book store in history. What the three stores had in common was that they all started out with a strong focus on underground comics. Memory Lane Books closed its doors in the 1980s, however, whereas Arlington's store went defunct in 2002,[12] leaving Lambiek as of 2023 the worldwide oldest surviving comic book store.[7][1]
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Kees Kousemaker and his wife Evelien also published two encyclopedic books about comics, titledStrip voor Strip (1970) andWordt Vervolgd (1979).[1] He and Margreet de Heer also wrote the bookDe Nederlandse Stripgeschiedenis (2001) andDe Wereld van de Nederlandse Strip (2005) aboutDutch comics and their history.[13] From 1986 on, the store gained fame by holding art exhibitions and book signings by numerous comic authors, includingRobert Crumb,Will Eisner,André Franquin,Joost Swarte,Charles Burns,Chris Ware,Daniel Clowes, François Avril andArt Spiegelman.[7][1]
In 2010, Lambiek's founder, Kees Kousemaker, died.[7]
Since 1 November 1999, Lambiek has also hosted theComiclopedia, a digital encyclopaedia featuring biographies of more than 14,000 international comics authors.[7][14][1]
