Totally loving the thread and the advice.
If I can toss in my 0.02 I had a DM who found a gig that seemed to work for him, and which worked well for me also.
You have each monsters stats on a sheet or card, and the same for each pc. You write init on each one, put them in order, and adjust the order as needed. When it's the monsters turn, you have the stats right in front of you ready to go, and if you use sheets of paper or make new ones each time you can just mark down damage etc on the sheets.
Other games where we use Maptools we use it's Initiative Tracker which helps you to easily see where you are in the order so you can get ready.
I have used both of these methods and they work great. for cards, my wife created a word document the printed out the PC cards with all of the important information on them. I just reprinted them on a sheet of 3x5 cards as needed. I would also fill the rest of the sheet with the monsters, that way I had 3x5 cards for each combatant that I stacked in order.
A trick I should have used was to print a set of monster for each combat with their prerolled int value on them and put them in order before the game. That way all I would have to do is insert the PC in the deck and initiative was done.