Would I be safe canonicalizing comments pages on the first page?

[BostonWright]

We are building comment pages for an article site that live on a separate URL from the article (I know this is not ideal, but it is necessary). Each comments page will have a summary of the article at the top. Would I be safe using the first page of comments as the canonical URL for all subsequent comment pages? Or could I get away with using the actual article page as the canonical URL for all comment pages?

[SeoExpertos]

I think the best way to do it, is to have the comments on the same url than the article.

Good Luck!

[BostonWright]

I think I decided to use the view-all page as the rel=canonical.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/view-all-in-search-results.html

[Dr-Pete]

I think your follow-up comment is a good bet - either use rel-canonical to a "View All" version or use the rel=prev/next tags. A canonical back to page 1 of comments is technically not endorsed by Google (although, honestly, it would still probably work in most cases). If you don't feel the comments add any SEO value, you could also just META NOINDEX pages 2, 3, etc.