So sorry I didn’t see this Brett. Yes, that’s exactly what I had to do. I’ve since installed Akismet and it handles the spam much more efficiently (and without me screwing things up!).
I like your upside down avatar.
I figured it out. I thought I had searched the forums thoroughly enough, but when I saw some of the um, unkind replies to other questions (not yours), I searched some more and found the phpMyAdmin functionality. It wasn’t what I was expecting to have to do, but I was able to go into the db and change the marker on the comments from spam to approved.
Thank you!