I've been noticing that, ever since we switched to the new comments section (the one where you press "reply" and the answer box apears in-line) it has become impossible to access previous pages of comments for strips where the comments section is closed. If you'll remember, before the "previous comments" link was at the top; now it's part of the answer box, and disappears with it when the comments section is closed.

Take, for example, the July 8, 2008 strip (also known as the "I am going to get SO many comments over this, aren’t I?" strip). 167 comments are reported, but unless you know to add "page 1" in the right place to the address bar, you can only see the last five of these "so many comments"

Yes I know. This is an error with Comicpress 2.8 and apparently there is noit going to be a fix this version.

is it a problem just with my computer that i can not acces the comments at all? (or at least they appear not to be there)

The comments aren't there on the homepage, you have to go to the comic directly to see the comments.