jamco
aka Jacob is a 29.55 year old boy, has been a member since September 4, 2004, has scored 1,733 submissions, giving an average score of 2.07, helping 30 designs get printed.
It isn't a trace - I used that image from the same source that Wondermark did - an open source, royalty-free, PUBLIC DOMAIN collection of old patents and engravings. You can see from the detail that mine is entirely unique linework, executed much differently (and better) than the original woodcut.
Have you ever used Illustrator? Because I want to know how simple you think it would be to use an image that small and try to "retrace" it? You can barely enlarge the image from Wondermark enough to see the facial expressions have been changed. Also, are you aware that almost every image from your beloved comic strip is a public domain image? All he has done is cut and pasted these images together. But somehow that doesn't offend your delicate and highly evolved sense on design. Just let me know what your design experience is. I am curious.