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Do you think practicing with a Wacom Tablet would hinder my abilities as an Artist, or anything?
Like others have mentioned, it's simply another art tool/technique. I have a Wacom Tablet and used it when I was working on a webcomic. Now that I'm kind of entering a burn-out phase in computer gaming, I'm starting to focus on art again.
I compare using a Wacom tablet to when I took life drawing classes (i.e., nekkid people) - the art instructor tells you to keep your eyes on the model (not too hard if they are attractive nekkid people, quite difficult if they are unattractive nekkid people) for the most part except when you need to figure perspective or do proportion measurements.
What I mean to say is when using your Wacom tablet, you have to get used to looking at the monitor screen as opposed to the actual tablet (where you have nothing to look at). It takes some getting used to, but it's really not hard once you get used to it.
Most webcartoonists usually draw their strips on paper first and scan them in. Then use photoshop, some other art program, or Flash to clean up the art once it's scanned into the computer.
I started out that way with my old webcomic, but with work and other time constraints, I wanted to reduce my cartoon art process time by simply doing everything in Photoshop with the Wacom tablet. I think it would have worked fine if I preferred to do the art with more of a loose feel. But, I was trying to do the line work as cleanly as possible, and frankly, I wasn't really happy with the results. But overall, it was a good learning process.
Wallop When I work on my new webcomic idea, I'm forcing myself to traditionally draw on paper first (which is really more interesting and fun for me, anyhoo), and then do the clean-up work with the Wacom tablet and Photoshop after I scan my drawings into the computer. I'm also going to try to keep things simplified, as when I get bogged down in details, I feel my work turns into a train wreck. Then again, I have that whole artistic self-loathing criticism working for me.