I used to get it years ago _ Spoilt Bastard, Buster Gonad, Roger Irrelivant, Big Vern, Roger Mellie, Student Grant to name a few.
I seem to remember the owners sold it and it went downhill from there. It could have been, as is the case with South Park and Family Guy, that the shock value was wearing thin and they had to be more controversial than funny to get a reaction from readers.
Just googled it and they said it used to sell 1.2million copies of each issue. Now down to 75k.
<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Viz_comic_strips" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Viz_comic_strips</a>