One great way to handle editing of complex shapes that use 90° extrema is to lean into Tunni lines[0] as a manipulation tool. Unfortunately these aren't present in Illustrator either, as far as I know, and is yet another reason why Illustrator's dominance as a bezier drawing software is less than warranted. Most font design software is better for drawing almost anything in bezier.
I’m gonna have to disagree with your last sentence. I’m pretty sure there isn’t any font design software out there that would let me draw an entire full-color comic page. (Which I mostly do with AI’s pencil tool - but when I need to get my hands dirty with the raw paths, I use the rules of thumbs mentioned above.)
0. http://help.fontlab.com/fontlab-vi/Tunni-Lines/