"These books present a degrading image of minors who are subjected to inhuman and crude treatment," said the association in its complaint, revealed by RMC and consulted by AFP.

It specifically targets "The mental discharge" (ed. Les Requins Marteaux, 2018), "Les Melons de la Colère" (ed. Les Requins hammers, 2011), as well as "Petit Paul" (ed. Glénat editions, 2018), three albums in which "minors are represented both in the context of sexual activities with adults and showing their private parts".

The complaint, sent Tuesday to the Paris prosecutor's office, targets facts of dissemination of child pornography, incitement to commit sexual assaults on minors and dissemination to a minor of violent messages.

According to Innocence in Danger, both the designer and the publishing houses "were perfectly aware of the minority of the characters and the pornographic nature of the situations in which they found themselves".

Bastien Vivès, 38 years old and figure of the 9th art, was to be honored with the exhibition "In the eyes of Bastien Vivès", planned in Angoulême during the Comic Strip Festival, at the end of January.

But the direction of the festival announced last week the cancellation of this exhibition, invoking "threats" which targeted the author and the organizers.

An online petition demanding the deprogramming of the exhibition, launched by Arnaud Gallais, founder of the BeBrave France movement, which campaigns against incest and sexual violence against children, had collected 92,000 signatures the day before the deprogramming.

Critics of Bastien Vivès accuse him, among other things, of having launched calls for violence on Facebook, under a pseudonym, against the feminist cartoonist Emma in 2017.

"Today I realize that beyond my works, it was above all my words that shocked," he wrote Thursday on Instagram.

"At no time did I want to hurt victims of crimes and sexual abuse. And I obviously want, if my words may have offended these people, to offer them my most sincere apologies," he added.

In 2018, after the publication of "Petit Paul", Glénat editions defended themselves by stating that "as obscene and provocative as it may be considered, this work of fiction is never intended to play down, favor or legitimize the abuse of minors in any way".

A report, sent at the time by the association Face à l'inceste requesting the withdrawal of this comic strip, was dismissed for "absence of offense" in February 2019, according to the Nanterre prosecutor's office, requested by the AFP.

© 2022 AFP