Galerie Lambiek is a Dutch comic book store and art gallery in Amsterdam, 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)).
[7] The logo of the shop is an image from the Suske en Wiske album Prinses 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 by Gary 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.
[13] From 1986 on, the store gained fame by holding art exhibitions and book signings by numerous comic authors, including Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, André Franquin, Joost Swarte, Charles Burns, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, François Avril and Art Spiegelman.
[7] Since 1 November 1999, Lambiek has also hosted the Comiclopedia, a digital encyclopaedia featuring biographies of more than 14,000 international comics authors.