It's an interesting feature! I'll suggest it to the dev team.
Webcomics and comics are drastically different in that for printed comics from companies like Marvel or DC, we sort of view the creators as these rock stars, just bold names on the cover. We only ever get a chance to meet them at conventions and even then we get a signature and maybe say a few words and that's all (with some exceptions thanks to twitter).
But webcomics... it's different. Suddenly, there's a direct way to communicate with the authors via commenting systems. It's more personal, more immediate, more transparent.
It's a blessing and a curse.
I know that Emy Bitner turned off her commenting system on her own website, it might have disrupted the flow of the story or maybe she didn't want that communication channel open.
I guess my advice is, if you're really uncomfortable with talking to your readers, or if you don't want to look at the comments, ignore it. Unsubscribe to the notifications or just shut them off from your account settings. And if you ever ever see a comment that bothers you, contact me (michaelson@tapasmedia.co) and I'll delete it, no questions asked.
I want everyone to feel at home at Tapastic. I would hate to think we've built a product that in any way makes a creator or reader feel uncomfortable in the slightest.