Counting records from a specific field??

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   I have two tables in the database, one called topics, and another called comments.

On the topics.asp page, the latest record is shown, with a topic id, title, date and summary. At the end of the summary, is a link that asks the user whether he'd like to comment on the topic. So the link reads something like:

<a href="comments.asp?topicid=<%=topicid%>">Post a comment</a>

Now I'd like to show how many comments that particular topic already has, on this link. How do I do that??

In the comments table, the fields are topicid (the one commented on), userid, username and usercomment. So I tried setting up a query, to count the number of comments for a particular topicid, but it didn't work.

Help?? 