Here’s the latest installment of Maggie Thompson’s ongoing look at important beginnings, middles and ends, this time for March 16-22, 2018...

115 years ago March 18, 1903 German political cartoonist Erich Ohser is born. He works under the pseudonym “E.O. Plauen” and is best known for his Vater und Sohn strip.

115 years ago March 22, 1903 Smokey Stover creator Bill Holman is born.

105 years ago March 16, 1913 Rudolph Dirks’ last installment of his creation The Katzenjammer Kids appears. (He continues his characters in Hans und Fritz and, later, in The Captain and the Kids.)

80 years ago March 17, 1938 Donald’s dog Bolivar is introduced to the Donald Duck comic strip by Bob Karp and Al Taliaferro.

80 years ago March 22, 1938 The Italian comics magazine Albi dell’Audace begins.

70 years ago March 18, 1948 The Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy sponsors the symposium “The Psychopathology of Comic Books.” Fredric Wertham announces that reading comics is “definitely and completely harmful.”

65 years ago March 19, 1953 DC and Marvel writer-editor Laurie S. Sutton is born. Her comics career begins with work as a Comics Code Authority reviewer.

60 years ago March 16, 1958 Omaha the Cat Dancer writer Kate Worley is born.

55 years ago March 17, 1963 Writer-artist Dave Miller is born. He creates the Dave comic strip.

50 years ago March 18, 1968 Artist Shea Anton Pensa is born. His work appears in Green Arrow, Sandman, and Spawn.

50 years ago March 20, 1968 Punmaster Comics creator and head of David Gross Entertainment David Gross is born.

25 years ago March 19, 1993 Writer-artist Alden McWilliams dies at age 77. He was known for Twin Earths, Star Trek, and Dateline: Danger! strips.

10 years ago March 19, 2008 Suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Belgian writer Hugo Claus, who scripted Belgman, chooses death by euthanasia at age 78.

10 years ago March 21, 2008 Tintin magazine founder Raymond Leblanc dies at age 92.

10 years ago March 21, 2008 Belgian artist Maurice Maréchal dies at age 85. He was known for Prudence Petitpas in Tintin.