Hide comments by default

Is there any way, when a person is viewing a post to have the comments link say “View comments” or what-have-you? I don’t like the way comments automatically show, so I’d like that people would come to the site and decide “oh id like to read the comments for this post — click”. Is that doable, or crazy jibberish talk? Even when theres no comments it still has the reply box and “Leave a Reply” etc. Is there any way to hide that? and open it on request?