‘TOON TALK

Garry Trudeau has withdrawn a series of “Doonesbury” cartoons about the student protests in China because of last weekend’s massacre. Last week, the strip was set in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where students had been protesting since April. Trudeau said the weekend’s events, in which hundreds were killed, made the cartoons obsolete and inappropriate. The strips sent out as substitutes are tied in with the Alaska oil spill. Trudeau told New York Newsday that the premise of the substitute strips “is that the artist tips an ink bottle on a whole week’s worth of strips.” He told the newspaper that the second week of strips on China was “predicated on a peaceful resolution.” “That was a very bad miscalculation . . . and now obviously inappropriate,” he said.