I got my graphics tablet through the refurbished product services offered by Wacom. It's cheaper and it works just as well as a new one, and you don't have to worry about getting a maybe broken one on eBay.
But actually I don't use it all that much. I do for my comics on my blog where I'm just drawing right into Photoshop, but since I started authoring my main comic in Illustrator I almost never use the tablet for that. I like and take advantage of the precise control you have in Illustrator. Also it facilitates the process of copying and modifying characters without loss of quality since it's all vector graphics. A cheaper and better time-saving solution to getting a scanner or tablet might be checking out Illustrator or a similar vector-based drawing program. It's especially good for those who just plain cannot draw well.
Illustrator aids in getting neater, more controlled stroke lines, and unless you rasterize something you can resize your original file to your heart's content.
Like here, unless I'm drawing on a gigantic canvas, I have a lot of trouble getting lines this smooth. Line smoothing tools in Photoshop, Flash, and other programs I just find too limiting in terms of control.
Illustrator is also a good tool for the lazy, because you can easily copy your backgrounds if you only make a few, and change their elements like color very easily. Likewise you could just build a bank of a few character poses and perspectives and re-use them with simple modifications.
If you really like seeing the hand-drawn stroke lines like this:
you're right, you can't beat a pressure-sensitive tablet. But don't discount drawing with a mouse, that's how I do almost everything in Illustrator.