As far as I know, Gabe uses a Cintiq, so he's drawing directly on the screen. I picked up one of the older Cintiq models off eBay for about €300 a couple of weeks ago (The new ones are in the €2,000 range over here), and it's fantastic. It's only got a 1024x768 screen, but the whole 'not looking at your hand' disconnect is completely abolished. It's got a 15" screen, so it's about the same size as standard copier paper, which was what I was using before. It's basically my most fun toy (I've got a PS3, but not a sex swing).
I have noticed that it really rewards quick pen strokes. Doing a quick slash with the default brush gives a nice smooth controlled-looking line, and I guess practising up on that will ultimately lead to better-looking comics with a shorter production time (I currently draw lots of little lines to make a big line. Since getting the Wacom I've moved the 'undo' function in photoshop up to allow for the last 220 moves).
For the non-screeny kind of tablets, the sticking-a-bit-of-paper-over-it thing sounds like a good idea to get the right texture under your hand. Also I can see the benefit of not having your view of what you're drawing obstructed by your hand once you get used to it.
I do have a tablet-related question: How do I use the 'rotate view' tool in Photoshop? There's a button for it at the top of the window, but it keeps telling me I can't use it. Do you need to be drawing in a particular file format?
[Edit: I looked it up. Go to Preferences -> Performance and enable OpenGL drawing. It's not in all versions of photoshop, but it lets you rotate the view of the page without altering the pixels you've drawn, which is handy.]