History
,_Bestanddeelnr_922-0593.jpg)
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. 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]
Kees Kousemaker and his wife Evelien also published two encyclopedic books about comics, titled Strip voor Strip (1970) and Wordt Vervolgd (1979).[1] He and Margreet de Heer also wrote the book De Nederlandse Stripgeschiedenis (2001) and De Wereld van de Nederlandse Strip (2005) about Dutch comics and their 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][1]
In 2010, Lambiek's founder, Kees Kousemaker, died.[7]
