Awesome! Glad to hear you're back on the saddle! Drawing can be a tough pasttime but the more you work at it, the better it'll get. You start early enough, you could quite possibly go pro in the future and there isn't anything cooler than the entertainment industry.
Now that you mention Desfinity, that reminds me of the last comment I sent you. I didn't know you knew Desfinity so I mention them in a very vague fashion. Just ignore all the weirdness, it'll go by faster.
I love comments for the same reason you do. Without trying to brag, I like compare myself to Quinten Tarentino. In pretty much all of his movies, he goes on very long descriptions about movies, songs, etc that give you his opinion of what they're saying, what all the symbols and words mean. I LOVE to explain stories and analyze their details. When I see a good pic, I like to go into every detail about them. Similarly, I like it when I can get a good conversation going off of one of my own pics. I get an excuse to narrate my own thoughts and sometimes I even pick up a few things from my commenters. What we're doing here right now is what I live for on DA.
While I haven't been given any bad comments myself yet (my problem is that I don't have many at all), I have seen mean-spirited comments on other pictures that make me angry. There's disagreeing with a picture and then there's just being a jerk. Fortuntately, the artists who get said negative comments are typically quick to defend themselves so it's not like they're being victimized. Hopefully, you don't get too many upsetting comments...