Donald Glover (a.k.a. Childish Gambino) may have lost the best hip-hop video award at the VMAs on Sunday, but his week hasn't been entirely bad. Today, it was announced that Glover has been cast as the voice of Spider-Man in the upcoming season of Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors, though not as the Spider-Man you're thinking of. Instead of voicing the original Spider-Man Peter Parker, Glover will be voicing Miles Morales, a 13-year-old half-black, half-hispanic Spider-Man, who was introduced in the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series back in 2011.
The plot of the upcoming season of Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors involves Peter Parker jumping around parallel dimensions chasing after the Green Goblin while meeting the other Spider-Men along the way, including Miles Morales. Though the new season is set to premiere on Sunday, Aug. 31 on Disney XD, the Miles Morales story arc won't air until next year. USA Today has shared an exclusive clip of the Glover-voiced Miles Morales, alongside Drake Bell's Peter Parker.
Donald Glover's casting as Spider-Man has been a long time coming. Back in 2010, Glover started a Twitter campaign (at the suggestion of his fans) to be cast as Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man movie, which was met with some unfortunately predictable racism from the Internet. The role eventually went to Andrew Garfield, but the campaign inspired comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis to create Miles Morales for the Ultimate Spider-Man series, so the character was literally made for Glover.
Since this is a music website, we should probably share the dates of Glover's upcoming Childish Gambino shows. You can check those out below:
09/06: Boston, MA @ Boston Calling
10/03-05: Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits Festival
10/10-12: Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits Festival
