Anyone who buys any of the current PANINI/MARVEL mags will know that, occasionally, there are no letters pages because of a paucity of epistles from which to publish. It's always been the case that the proportion of readers who write in to a comic is a relatively tiny one, which often made me wonder about British comics once including a small 'favourites' coupon for readers to fill in and send with their letters or jokes. After all, there was no guarantee that the strips listed were representative of the wider readership, so it was hardly an ideal way of evaluating which strips were really the most popular.
Did you ever fill in one of those coupons and send it in to your weekly comic? Cast your mind back to childhood and see if you can recall what your favourite strips were. Here's a list of weeklies to jog your memory: BUSTER, WHAM!, SMASH!, POW!, WHIZZER & CHIPS, COR!!, WHOOPEE!, WOW! - or any others you can think of. Just think - the choice of the few determined the reading options of the many. Hardly fair perhaps, but how else can one even try to gauge the popularity of a comic's contents? Never sent one in? Perhaps if you had, that strip you liked which disappeared might've continued if the editor had been made aware that more readers liked it. H'mm?
Okay, thinking caps on, typing fingers at the ready.
