wp_list_comments not working (outside the loop)

Ok… I’ve spent all day trying to figure out what the heck is going on… I am an amateur and this is the 1st theme I’ve ever developed but I want it to have alot.

Anyhow I am having trouble getting wp_list_comments(); to work at all, it won’t display a thing. I’ve read the codex and copy and pasted the code straight from it to output a SIMPLE comment list. But if I use comments_template(); everything is displayed with the same markup generated as what wp_list_comments(); is supposed to generate from my understanding.

I need to make a customized loop using wp_list_comments(); and very confident I can if I can just figure out what the hell I’m missing.

I understand the old of way of doing this as it is the simple foreach loop to loop through an array object but I want to use the new as I don’t want to make people download a plugin to worry about pagination. I’ve read a tutorial posted in one of the topics here about the 2.7 upgrade and still am having trouble.

Heres the link:
https://ottodestruct.com/blog/2008/wordpress-27-comments-enhancements/

Please help ?? and thank you very much a head of time!