There is the "latest comments" bit. If your skin doesn't have it you can easily snag it from the custom skin. It'll be a file called _lastcomments.php in both your skins folder and your skins/skinname folder. You MIGHT have to look inside skins/custom/_main.php for a bit of code that makes _main understand how to display the latest comments.

<?php // ---------------- START OF INCLUDES FOR LAST COMMENTS, STATS ETC. ----------------
	switch( $disp )
	{
		case 'comments':
			// this includes the last comments if requested:
			require( dirname(__FILE__).'/_lastcomments.php' );
			break;

		case 'arcdir':
			// this includes the archive directory if requested
			require( dirname(__FILE__).'/_arcdir.php');
			break;

		case 'profile':
			// this includes the profile form if requested
			require( dirname(__FILE__).'/_profile.php');
			break;
	}
// ------------------- END OF INCLUDES FOR LAST COMMENTS, STATS ETC. ------------------- ?>

You don't have to include the link on your page if you don't want to. Just know that "domainname.tld/blog/index.php?disp=comments" will get you to that page. You could go there once and bookmark it for your own convenience.

Also in your skins/_lastcomments.php file you can change a parameter to show as many comments as you want.

$CommentList = & new CommentList( $blog, "'comment','trackback','pingback'", $show_statuses, '',	'',	'DESC',	'',	20 );

Just change the 20 to maybe 100 to see lots of posts if you get hit by lots of comment spam.

BTW that is one of the biggest changes regarding antispam in the phoenix generation: it scans comment text looking for bad words. In phoenix you can ban an entire sentence if you happen to see the same exact content in many different comments.

hmmm. then maybe i DO want to just go to phoenix. decisions decisions.