Donald Glover Will Finally Get To Play Spider-Man (In A Cartoon)

Between Tobey Maguire's reign as our friendly big-screen Spider-Man and Andrew Garfield's, there was a brief period when Donald Glover was pushing for the job. That never came to be, of course, but now he's finally getting his chance to play the webslinger all the same. The catch: it's in a cartoon, not a live-action big-budget movie franchise.

Glover is set to voice Miles Morales in an upcoming episode of Disney XD's Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors, which has Peter Parker (voiced by Drake Bell) passing through different parallel universes. Watch a clip featuring the Donald Glover Spider-Man after the jump.

USA Today unveiled the footage. The plot arc centers on Green Goblin's dimension-hopping quest to collect DNA from all the different Spider-Men. (Including Spider-Man Noir and Bob Hembeck's in-house parody Spider-Ham.)Glover's campaign for Spider-Man came in 2010, when Sony was looking to reboot the franchise with a new lead actor. Despite the enthusiastic support of thousands of Twitter and Facebook followers, though, the studio was not moved. Garfield was chosen instead, and his Amazing Spider-Man film series launched in 2012.

Still, it wasn't all for nothing. A few months after Glover lost the part, he got a brief, brief chance to don Spidey's signature red-and-blue in an episode of Community. That, in turn, helped inspire the "look" of Miles Morales, who was created by Brian Michael Bendis and introduced to Marvel Comics' Ultimates universe in 2011.

In the books, Miles is a half-black, half-Latino teenager from Brooklyn who stepped into the Spider-Man role after Peter Parker died within the Ultimates timeline. The character has proven popular enough that even Garfield has voiced his hopes of bringing Miles into the cinematic universe. Unfortunately, producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach seem to feel quite differently.

Speaking to USA Today, Glover said that although voicing Miles on TV wasn't the same thing as playing Spidey in the movies, it was "pretty good." He continued: "I'm still holding out, though. I still have hopes to do something like that one day. I don't look at this as second place. Spider-Man, he's such an icon — you have to do something with him."

Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors premieres this Sunday, August 31 at 9 PM on Disney XD. The "Spider-Verse" arc will air in 2015.