appending Comments during an initial programmatic create

I am programmatically creating work items and I am having issues doing comments.  The code does this:

//get a "working copy" of an empty work item
final IWorkItemType workItemType = workItemClient.findWorkItemType (projArea, "defect", null);
final IWorkItemHandle handle = workItemClient.getWorkItemWorkingCopyManager().connectNew (workItemType, null);
final WorkItemWorkingCopy workingCopy = workItemClient.getWorkItemWorkingCopyManager ().getWorkingCopy (handle);
final IWorkItem workItem = workingCopy.getWorkItem ();

//fill in all the values
.
//Description
XMLString description = XMLString.createFromPlainText(descriptionText);
workItem.setHTMLDescription (description);           

.
//add the comments
IComments srcComments = workItem.getComments();
XMLString content = XMLString.createFromPlainText(contentString);
IComment ic = srcComments.createComment(creator , content);
srcComments.append(ic);
//workItem.setValue(comment,srcComments);

//save to create it
final IDetailedStatus status = workingCopy.save (null);

Now, I was trying the setValue() at the end but that gave a classCastException, so I removed it.  My code runs and the description shows up in the new work item, but no comments.  The description uses setHTMLDescription() but I didn't find a "setComments() or setHTMLComments().

Has anyone done this?  Can you send a snippet or tell me what I am doing wrong??

Thanks in advance,
susan