Wicked

Michigan State University has the largest public comics collection and they host the Comics Forum every year. Gary Hoppenstand and Ann Larabee are two of the faculty who teach classes on comics there.

First off, congratulations on your admission!  You totally won the waitlist game.  Long distance high-5.
 
I'll be coming out with my PhD when I'm either 39 or 40.  38 if I'm very, very lucky/speedy. This is clearly my second career.  I agree with lemma - graduating at 30 is not "old."  You can reasonably expect to live until you're 80.  You spent the first 20 years of your life being a child with little-to-know ability to affect your life.  So of the 60 remaining years, you're spending 10 getting a higher education.  That sounds pretty good to me.

So, you deal with it by living life.  Your PhD is not your entire life - you also will have friends, families, relationships, goals, ambitions, and so forth that have NOTHING to do with your PhD.  Your goal during your program (besides, you know, finishing) is to figure out what it takes to get a job.  You have 5 years to do that.  I think I could do pretty much anything if I put my mind to it for 5 years.  Learn Chinese? Sure.  Figure out a Senate run?  No problem.  Become a professional violinist?  With enough dedication, sure.  All you have to do is figure out how to get a job...and you'll be literally surrounded by people who have already been there, knows what it takes, and it is their job to help you achieve that goal.
You got this!  Use the resources you'll have at your university, make connections at other universities (especially in your home country, if that's where you want to end up), and - most importantly - remember to live your life.
The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself.

you're entering a field where you will essentially commit to a lifetime of learning, or perish in irrelevancy. Though I have certainly been in graduate courses that were not as great as I could have hoped, I have benefited from every graduate course I've taken. This can be in the general, "I know am better qualified to teach X" statement for courses not tied to my research OR have been able to apply aspects and writing from a course to my own research. The more graduate courses you can take, the more chances you have to vet your research and make connections with professors.
Yes, all the credits you earn during your MA won't significantly reduce your time to degree with a PhD. It depends on the specific PhD program, though; some will take 2 classes top, others count 3-4 semesters worth. This actually makes a great deal of sense, given no university teaches the same exact graduate class. In English/lit, there seems to in fact only be a consistent one or two courses that most universities touch on. The rest varies greatly.
If you're looking for a career that has a clear, quick path that can be easily managed and predicted, academia isn't it. Yes, people experience fatigue and drop-out. This is the nature of the career path though; even those who finish their doctorates in under 5 years can still experience burn-out with academia after completing their degrees. Coming off of UG, it might be tempting to see the whole MA/PhD question in the same vein that most UG folks see their lives -- "the faster I finish my B.A., the faster I can start my actual career." In other words, it seems like the mindset of runners with distance events (i.e. sprint, 10K). The reality is academia is a life-long distance event that, though there are desired goals (finish PhD, get on the TT, get tenure, etc), doesn't really stop until you die or retire. Further, you have already started your career. This is it. Though you are incredibly limited in what you can do, research and teaching-wise, you are know basically considered a member of the academic profession.
Returning to my distance event analogy, with your BA you've essentially completed a 5K. Though you may be able to, why jump straight to one 10K (MA en-route to PhD) while training for a Marathon? Knock out a 10K before you start training for that Marathon. Yeah, you'll need to do more running, but you'll be better prepared for the marathon. Plus, you aren't doing just one marathon in this analogy; you're entire life will be marathon after marathon (publishing, getting tenure, publishing more, etc) until you're physically or mentally unable to run anymore marathons.
All of this is to say that another year or two between now and getting your PhD is not as big a deal as I think you think it is.
 
Instead of most well-known, you might instead consider if the professors are a good fit for your specific interests. Just because a program is X rank on USNWR, doesn't mean that the faculty will be able to help you develop as a researcher. Then consider funding. Some may disagree, but I think a well-fit program with full-funding and profs who don't have PhD students to wrangle is a far better option than  having partial- to no-funding in a big program where you'll be competing with PhD candidates for attention.