Fun and Funky, Fresh and Feisty, these terrific web sites have won the coveted Soup Can Seal of Approval. Go hence and bask in electronic acres of Ready-to-Eat wonderfulness! And come back here often - we're always adding more. Updated November 2006.

Lee is not only one of the finest, most conscientious comic book artists working today -- he's also an old (20+ years!) friend, dating back to the days of the original Duck Soup. You've seen his work in Batman Chronicles: The Gauntlet, X-Men and others for DC and Marvel... and this summer he's writing AND drawing a hot new miniseries starring Spider-Man. His website features original art galleries, behind the scenes info and lots more -- go there now!

Tom recently interviewed one of our favorite Marvel Comics artists, Gene "The Dean" Colan for Comic Book Artist magazine. Colan drew Daredevil, Iron Man, The Tomb of Dracula, Howard the Duck and many more, and was easily the most evokative artist in the Marvel talent pool. Fortumately for all of us, TwoMorrows have posted that interview complete at their website. Check it out for an insightful look into 1970s Marvel and the story behind the stories. Find it at: http://twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/13colan.html

Tom Field is one of our best friends from the days of the original Duck Soup. He has been a sports columnist for The Ellsworth American and others, editor of two newspapers, and now he is a columnist for CIO magazine. A recent article of his on Visual Data examined the subject using faux comic book super-heroes as guides. The article and accompanying illustrations are now posted at CIO's website. As Tom says, "It's comic-booky and certainly shows the influence of my Duck Soup days. Find it at: http://www.cio.com/archive/061598_visual.html

Edited by Algis Budrys, this on-line SF magazine is the home of Bruce Canwell's fine reviews column, Books Off The Beaten Track. The reviews themselves are always worth reading, and may steer you towards writers and works that you might not consider otherwise, but it's the opening essays that make Bruce's column worth tracking down. See what I mean at: http://www.tomorrowsf.com/jindex.html

Cock Hill Farm focuses on the fun side of the antiques business with folk art, toys and Disneyana as the main attractions. This site features lots of pictures, QuickTime movies and more. Even if you aren't buying, there's plenty here to interest the eccentric and eclectic mind. click here!

While traveling through England several years ago I visited Cabaret Mechanical Theater at its Covent Garden location. Cabaret is a small museum (and an even smaller store) devoted to modern automata, with an emphasis on satirical and whimsical pieces. For me, Cabaret was the best example of London's funky side, and their website is everything you could ask for in eccentric fun. Lots of unusual links you won't find anywhere else, too. http://www.cabaret.co.uk/start.htm

Fans of our own Tinsel*Town Comics Serial will surely want to check this out: the BEST website devoted to silent films and their stars, including extensive sections on Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. A huge collection of pictures, lobby cards and more. Go now!

The title says it all: this is the most comprehensive collection of links devoted to all things having to do with puppets, marionettes, puppet theater and automata. It's one of the finest resource sites on the web, devoted to subject that's full of charm and wonderment. http://www.sagecraft.com/puppetry/

Join Kulka, Fran, Ollie and all the Kuklapolitan players at this smashing and beautifully designed website devoted to one of the most delightful children's television programs of all time. Features pictures, sound and video clips, and original cartoon drawings from the show. Simply one of the sweetest places you can visit on the internet, recently moved to a spanking new domain of its own. http://www.kukla.tv

The late Edward Gorey raised morbid humor and gothic melodrama to the highest of arts. He has designed stage settings for the Broadway production of Dracula (which starred Frank Langella as The Count) and the credit sequences for PBS's Mystery series. His work is delirious and nonsensical and disturbing and oddly moving. And here's a website devoted to his art. http://www.goreyography.com/west/west.htm

More European street theater than circus, Cirque du Soleil provides astonishing sights and breathtaking performances wrapped in gaudy musical confections. Their website is less than what it could be, but I don't hold that against them. If you have never had the opportunity to see them, it will give you a clue as to the flavor of their productions, and you can even buy videotapes of the shows. http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/

FINALLY, this first-class one-ring circus gets its own website, where you can learn all bout its current tours, circus history, and more. I had the privedge of seeing them several years ago when their tour included Mumenshanz -- and thanks to the marvelous show it was the most enjoyable bad date I've ever been on! Big Apple takes the classic circus arts seriously, and is easily the best small circus left in America. Click on over to: http://www.bigapplecircus.org/

Want to run away to the circus but have to be at work sharp on the dot tomorrow morning? Here's a happy place for you. You'll find links to the web pages of many American and International circuses, plus circus history, pictures, clowns, the works. And the admission is free! Just click here: http://www.circusweb.com/circuswebFrames.html

London-based school of the circus arts. If you like circuses and Britain both, this would be the place for you, then, wouldn't it?

We nominate P.T. Barnum as the Man of The Millennium. In addition to all of his circus, museum and management activities, he wrote several books: one of them, "The Humbugs of The World," is posted for on-line reading at the University of Michigan. Like most books of its time it is mannered and eccentric -- that's one of the reasons we like it so much. We thought about publishing the book in PDF form, but, y'know what? You can save us all that work just by going to: http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/cgi-bin/moa/sgml/moa-idx?notisid=AFW8590

I thought I'd landed in book heaven when I stumbled on this site. It's a directory listing a wide range of public-domain books that you can download from various places around the web. You'll find everything from L. Frank Baum to John Dos Passos, arranged by subject or alphabetically by author. A must-bookmark resource. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/books.html

For me, Marvel Comics are the purest definition of popular culture in the mid-to-late '60s. These are the greatest covers ever to grace comic books, period. And they're all here, ready for you to download and decorate your desktop! http://www.geocities.com/~nick-fury/index.html

Not a complete repository for every BATMAN comic book cover, nonetheless you will find a large collection of classic (and frequently surreal) covers from the 1940s, when Batman was still at his purest and most innocent best. http://www.ocsonline.com/~bjourdain/gabatcovers.html

Between 1932 and 1948, Walter Gibson wrote well over 300 full length novels about the original Darknight Detective, The Shadow. Gibson was himself an interesting character: speed writer, editor of books and magazines devoted to Magic and Magicians, press secretary to the great Blackstone and a pretty fair inventor of magical illusions in his own right. His Shadow novels are quirky, inventive, exciting and charming. The vast majority of these stories have been unavailable and out of print for decades: now, thanks to John Olsen, the complete novels are available for you to download and enjoy. Just don't tell Conde Nast! http://www.spaceports.com/~deshadow/

A refined and genteel haven for ladies and gentlemen of breeding who crave a relaxing evening with classic radio serials. Here you will find the most complete collection of The Shadow, Doc Savage and The Avenger radio shows on the net. Very high quality, wonderful service: will provide you with months of entertainment starring the greatest pulp and fantasy heroes of all time. Friendly management, too!

We've removed all of our other pulp links, because you can find them (and many more to lead you ever deeper into the world of Pulp Fiction) right here in one outstanding resource. Doc Savage? They got links to him. The Avenger? They got links to him. Captain Future? The Spider? Weird Tales? All here, and plenty more. This is THE hub of pulp sites on the web. Go there -- but prepare to spend a lot of time exploring literally HUNDREDS of sites! http://ThePulp.Net/

Beautiful web literary magazine edited and designed by Faruk Ulay, which combines word and image in top-notch flash animations.

An elegant web literary magazine, nicely designed and executed, featuring work by Cathryn Hankla, Alyson Hagy and others. Dennis Hathaway, its editor, also dared to publish a story of mine in Crania's fifth issue. You can read the entire run online at: http://www.digitaldaze.com/crania/

Literary webzine from Britain, simple in design but packed deep with stories, poems and content. Now that they've moved to their new web address, they're devoid of annoying adverts as well. Check them out at:

The Palace is essential software for every computer platform -- a graphical chat client that allows you to wear many faces and move about in 2-D fantasy worlds that you can devise and host yourself. Though no longer supported by its titular owners, The Palace is still very much alive thanks to its devoted users. Visit our own Duck Soup Palace and download all the free software you need at: http://www.palacetools.com

An homage to the brilliant Czech animator who gave us "Alice" and many more films, all of them packed with eerie delight...

While Grosset & Dunlap continue to publish bowdlerized, completely rewritten versions of their famous Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series, Applewood has brought back the original versions in all their glory. Carl Sandburg's wonderful Rootabaga Stories and E.G. Lutz's first book on animation are among the titles in their fall lineup. Daniel Boone's autobiography, Songs of The Cowboys, Blackfeet Indian stories and the hugely rare Wizard of Oz Waddle Book are all at home on their backlist. If this sounds like just the sort of thing that tickles you, head on over to: http://www.awb.com

Simply the best online resource for info about camp and cult B-movies. Not only that, but the B-Monster himself produces the hands-down BEST daily web comic on the net: THE CRATER KID! See it at our "Slumberland" site or see it at craterkid.com, but see it!

Forrest J. Ackerman is a fantasy literary agent, Hollywood hanger-on and the egomaniacal editor of magazines like FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND. He's also a wildly entertaining guy who has led an interesting life hobnobbing with the great and near great in the fantasy film and literature scene. His collection of fantasy and horror memorabilia is world-reknowned, and he's put some of it on-line in a virtual walkthrough of the Ackermansion that's a whole lot of fun to visit and explore. Forry is just all-around cool: and so is his site. http://www.best.com/%7E4forry/

Altogether ooky and lots of fun if you like this sort of thing -- an on-line spook show inventively drawn and animated in Flash. http://www.toxictoons.com

Alain Boisvert has put together the BEST website of any kind in the known universe. The fact that it's devoted to puppetry in general and to his own marionette theater Le Matou Noir in particular only makes the site trebly wonderful. Here you'll find fun icons to download, a wonderful forum for dialogues on puppet history -- and I can testify that Mr. Boisvert is a generous and fascinating person to correspond with. Hasten with all due alacrity to his site at: http://www.aei.ca/~matou/marionnettes/grand/site.html

Do you feel inclined to engage in cheerful acts of rebellion designed to gently nudge the perpetrators of beurocracy and cultural oppression? If so, Cacophony Society is for you -- and they have branches all over the country. Find out how you can participate by clicking over to: http://www.cacophony.org/

Who needs the Sunday paper when you can get all the best comics on-line? After you've checked out our own Tinsel*Town and Quirk Sunday Comics, be sure to visit the site that inspired us to do it: FiascoNet, where Dandy Don Simpson has been giving us weekly doses of his hyper-thyroid hero MEGATON MAN for better than two years now -- full of fun, adventure and a huge cast of supporting characters, the Megaton Weekly Serial is new every Sunday night at http://www.megatonman.com

If Judy Garland is the first thing you think about when you hear the word OZ, you have a powerful amount of catching up to do. L. Frank Baum wrote 14 books about the place, many of them better than the first, peopled with wonderful characters like Jack Pumpkinhead, Tik-Tok, the Wogglebug and more. We suggest you start with these -- if if you can't, then this website will help bring you up to speed. http://12.16.163.163/default.asp

You either get it or you don't -- that's true of many things, but it's especially true of the long-running British Science Fiction Soap Opera, Doctor Who. We confess to being a big fan of the TV series (if not of the various spin-offs), and we're excited to learn that Big Finish Productions is producing new, official, fully-licensed-by-the-BBC audio adventures starring the original TV series cast. And, surprize! They're very good -- a blend of Doctor Who and top-notch radio drama. See them here: http://www.doctorwho.co.uk

Jackie Lane and I have friends in common -- among them John Steed and Mrs. Emma Peel, the Avengers (not the imposters in this summer's godawful movie of the same name). Her "Avengers" website is personal and informative, with lots to see and read, and she combines the page, delightfully, with one devoted to her musical interests. Be prepared to dance and dash when you click to: http://www.mindspring.com/~jglane

Neat-o retro fonts represented on a neat-o retro web page (one that's constantly changing, always offering something new). Lots of free stuff (and what isn't free is darned reasonably priced), plus the most eclectic and enjoyable collection of links I've yet encountered on the web. http://www.girlswhowearglasses.com/