Whether you know him best as Lotor in Voltron: Legendary Defender or Gambit in X-Men ’97, or countless other performances in numerous acclaimed and fan-favorite animated series, it’s no exaggeration to say AJ LoCascio is one of the best in the voiceover industry. LoCascio is no stranger to attending San Diego Comic-Con and this year was no exception. However, last month marked his first time at SDCC as a comic book creator with his debut children’s book, SPOOPS: The Little Spirits of Halloween.
Illustrated by Laurie A Conley, the book follows an adorable young girl named Holly Hollowell forbidden from enjoying Halloween festivities by her dentist parents. Luckily for Holly, magical sprites known as Spoops arrive to turn things around and in the process teach her parents the true spirit of Halloween.
I’ve had the immense pleasure of getting to interview LoCascio at press junkets for a number of his animated projects over the years at The Beat. So the opportunity to sit down with him to chat about Spoops was the perfect way to end SDCC on an incredibly high note.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
AJ LoCascio: I’ve always made art and written. I just love making stuff. Actors who don’t make things or don’t have hobbies are weird and usually go crazy. [Laughs]. I started making little decorations for my desk. That’s how the Spoops started. I wanted to make tiny figurines that didn’t take up a lot of space. They weren’t giant decorations. A bunch of people saw them on my Instagram and asked how I could get these and I was like, “I don’t know!” But then it turned out that people wanted to purchase them. And then it ballooned into me making a few of them and then a bunch of them. I started developing a story for them. My buddy Josh Keaton from Voltron [said], “Hey man you’ve got to make this into a book.” I started developing the book six years ago and it took a long time. Some people are like, “Seventy-two pages is a lot for a picture book.” But it took six years of work slimming that down.
Taimur Dar: You and I are both kids of the ‘90s, so I’m willing to wager we both watched a lot of same Halloween specials.
AJ LoCascio: Oh, absolutely.
Taimur Dar: One of my all-time favorites was The Halloween Tree.
AJ LoCascio: I was going to say Halloween Tree was a big inspiration for me. Great Pumpkin, obviously. There’s the Garfield Halloween [special] and Hocus Pocus and Tower of Tower on ABC
Taimur Dar: With Kirsten Dunst!
AJ LoCascio: Yeah! And Steve Guttenberg. I miss Halloween specials from the ‘80s and ‘90s. That’s kind of what my aspiration is. I miss going home as a kid and rushing to see whatever the new Halloween special is. In addition to loving old-fashioned books like Little Bear and Dr. Seuss and Matilda. Books that I don’t see too often maybe because I’m older. I don’t notice them in the wild.
Taimur Dar: I cover a lot of children’s media, particularly in animation. Even if I didn’t, I’m not ashamed to admit, I’d still be watching media intended for children during my free time. I think in previous generations, there was this expectation for people to abandon children’s media once they reached adulthood. But there’s so much children’s entertainment I genuinely enjoy.
AJ LoCascio: Same! There are certain shows where I’m like, “This is better than any adult show right now.” I learn more about things from Bluey. There’s a show I’ve become fascinated by called Sarah & Duck. It’s a British cartoon about a little girl who has a pet duck she lives with. The narrator is sort of her parent. It’s about their absurd and surreal adventures together. It has so much heart and meaning behind it. I find myself gravitating towards that sort of softer entertainment that feels nostalgic and warm and comforting. More so than, “I’ll guess I’ll rewatch Breaking Bad.” Reality is hard enough! Doug was one of my favorite shows growing up. The way he dealt with anxiety I found very comforting as a kid. He would pretend he was Indiana Jones or Smash Adams.
Taimur Dar: Along that theme, Spoops follows a little girl named Holly who is forced by her dentist parents to forsake Halloween. There’s definitely a meta-narrative I think anyone can relate to. I’d love to hear what inspired the story and character?
AJ LoCascio: I appreciate that you get it and see through the set dressing! [I] grew up feeling very nerdy and no one liked me and having a hard time in high school and middle school. I’m lucky that my parents understood some of the things that I liked but not all of them. [It was] this feeling of trying to get your parents to understand who you are and what you love and are passionate about and other people seeing you for who you are. She’s fixated on Halloween which is her thing which for me as a kid was definitely a thing.
I feel like we all in the nerd community can fixate on something and it becomes your obsession. In many ways this is a very thinly veiled parallel for that or feeling some way about yourself that you want others to understand. The story is in many ways about that and trying to get people to see you for who you are and accept you for who you are.
Taimur Dar: As I mentioned before, I’m always blown away to discover performers who also have artistic skills and talent. For the longest time, I had no idea Phil Hartman was a graphic artist designing album covers before becoming a performer. The artist on Spoops is Laurie Conley. How did you end up collaborating with her and did you have aspirations to illustrate Spoops yourself?
AJ LoCascio: There was a time. Definitely in the beginning I thought about drawing it myself. But I only thought about it for a few seconds. I’ve been a fan of Laurie for years. It’s funny, when I first saw her stuff she had no followers. [Laughs]. She was obscure in some ways. I got lucky that I found her very early on. Her stuff is so rich and beautiful and feels like from another time. That’s something that’s so rare. I looked at thousand and thousands of picture books and kids’ books and artists and I’ve never come across anyone who hits it as hard as she does where it feels timeless like Maurice Sendak or Quentin Blake or Beatrix Potter. I’m obsessed with all of those styles of drawing and I haven’t found anyone who hits it as well as she does in a way that’s not put on. She’s doing it in a way that’s very earnest and it’s what she loves.
Also the fact that she was drawing ghost and Halloween. It was something we connected over early on. I approached her and said, “I have these figures that I sculpted and I want to do a book with them. If I sent you these figures, could we start to develop [it]?” Translating them from a sculpture to a drawing was challenging. We basically had to do the same thing you do in animation where I built turnarounds with the front, the back, and the side. They always have a swoop to their back and the eyes never get bigger than this [size]. We had to create model sheets so that it stayed with how my brain views the Spoops. I was unfortunately very strict but she nails it. She comes up with things that I could never imagine. She’s a genius. I feel incredibly fortunate to have her drawing this.
Taimur Dar: The book is fantastic.
AJ LoCascio: Thank you! You’re fantastic!
[Laughter]
Taimur Dar: I’d love to know where you want to next take Spoops. Perhaps its own animated special?
AJ LoCascio: I would love that. An animated special would be a dream. Something in the style of Great Pumpkin that a kid could put on every year and feel comforted by would be the ultimate thing. I’d love to do more Spoops stories. I don’t know if it would be the same format where a kid needs help but more about the Spoops. I imagine them as Woodstock from Peanuts or fairies like Tinker Bell where they have their own world they inhabit. I would love to do more stuff with them on their own. This book has to do well first!
Stay tuned to The Beat for more coverage from SDCC ’25.
