'God' and Jerry Garcia

By Stephen M. Silverman

10/09/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

There may be another strike against the animated NBC series "God, the Devil and Bob." Besides there being 18 network affiliates that refuse to air the controversial show, heirs to the estate of the late Grateful Dead icon Jerry Garcia are now looking into the possibility of suing the producers of the program. They say that on the show the God character looks an awful lot like Garcia. (In California there are laws to prevent the use of celebrity likenesses without permission from the estates.) Garcia family attorney David Phillips insists God wears his hair and sunglasses the same way Jerry did. But artist Robert Peluce, who created the original drawing, says a cameraman pal of his was the model. "Everybody just jumped on the resemblance to Garcia," Carlson told USA Today. "But that wasn't our intent."