A Visit to Henk Comics in Amsterdam

On May 13th I embarked on my first vacation in almost four years. Where’d I go? Cities I’ve wanted to visit for a long time, Paris and Amsterdam. Now while I could have done a bunch of business while on the trip, this was vacation so we kept the business out of it entirely, but I still couldn’t resist the chance to visit a comic shop or two while in Europe.

On the afternoon of May 16th, I decided to stop by Henk Lie’s Comics and Mangastore in Amsterdam. It was about a 15 minute walk from my hotel near the Red Light District and pretty easily found. Here’s a picture of the storefront.

As you can probably tell by the Transformers, Batman, Spider-Man and Superman stained glass pieces above the door and window, this is an American centric comic shop. It’s tiny, but that’s really not fair to say considering the size of the shops I’m used to in Los Angeles. For Amsterdam, it’s about an average size for a store, but the low ceilings and packed confines of the store meant it was a bit cramped inside.

There was a large selection of Manga, American comics, toys, graphic novels and more back issues than you generally find in an American comic shop these days. The new weekly periodicals could be found on the left hand side of the store, as you walk in. I imagine if I spent an extended period of time in Amsterdam for some reason, this would become my store of choice to pick up my American comic needs. There was a small love seat at the front of the store.

As I walked out of the store, I noticed something interesting.

The store directly next door to Henk’s was a coffee shop named The Jolly Joker, where marijuana and hash and the like can be purchased. I could see New Comics Wednesdays being a far more interesting experience in Amsterdam, that’s for sure.

While I didn’t get the name of the two guys working the register that day (was one of them Henk?), they did point me in the direction of a more European centric comic shop just about five blocks down the road named Go Joker. I’ll share some pictures from that visit tomorrow.

Thanks to CBR Twitter follower @xclame for the suggestion to visit Henk.