Markus Triska has been very cool in responding to my feature requests for his CGIComment program! CGIComment is perfect for my needs, but I thought there ought to be a way to get a comment count for a given article. Markus quickly responded by sending me a private version of CGIComment with the requested features and plans on releasing a new public version soon. Thanks Markus!
If you really, really want to comment, please mail n1xt3r@fastmail.fm