Ah, man, this is so awesome... via Russell Arben Fox I came across a wonderful site called Blogger Hacks, that tells you how to update your Blogger template so that:
1) You can now post comments directly from the post page itself (and commenters don't need to register with Blogger any more either).
2) A list of "Recent Comments" is displayed on the sidebar.
(I understand that his next hack is going to automatically convert old Haloscan comments into Blogger ones. I wish I'd had such a resource available to me when I switched comment systems a month or so ago!)
This really is a huge improvement. I whole-heartedly recommend other Blogger users go update their own templates similarly! :)