Brian Truitt

USA TODAY

Spider-Man has been a cartoon fixture for decades, but never with quite this many Spider-Men at the same time.

Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors, the third season of the popular Disney XD series, premieres Aug. 31 with a ton of comic-book guest stars, a bigger scope of the Marvel Universe than before and a "Spider-Verse" story line that will introduce Spidey (voiced by Drake Bell) to his counterparts from various alternate realities, including Miles Morales.

The new episodes are "going to really show how important Spider-Man — and by extension Peter Parker — is to the entire universe we've built," says Stephen Wacker, former Spider-Man editor at Marvel Comics and current vice president in Marvel Television's animation division.

"Spider-Man is the center of everything we do. He's arguably the face of our company, him and Robert Downey Jr."

The first season of Ultimate Spider-Man focused on the web-swinging superhero learning how to fit within his group of S.H.I.E.L.D. teammates Nova, White Tiger, Power Man and Iron Fist, and the second featured the likes of A-listers Captain America, Iron Man and Thor as Spidey got a crash course in what it takes to be an Avenger.

This season, in addition to using more multi-episode story lines, features a peeks at different corners of the Marvel Universe with kids meeting new heroes such as Doctor Strange, Ka-Zar of the Savage Land, Agent Venom, Cloak & Dagger and Amadeus Cho. Wacker says Spidey's the perfect conduit for that "because he's the character we associate with Marvel the most."

Spider-Man comics have their own "Spider-Verse" crossover coming up, and while the four-episode Ultimate Spider-Man story line won't feature the same story, it will have a basic starting point as Spidey meets a variety of folks from various universes, including Iron Spider, Spider-Man Noir and Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham, a porcine fan-favorite who had his own kid-friendly 1980s comic.

The material featuring Spider-Man 2099 shows a futuristic world with a completely new computer-generated design aesthetic, according to Wacker, and another world offers a gender-swapped take on Spidey and friends that Wacker had pitched as a comic-book story line a few years back. There, Petra Parker is Spider-Girl and she has to deal with characters such as crusty newspaper editor J. Joan Jameson.

And the cartoon Miles Morales is very much inspired by the half-black, half-Latino character introduced by writer Brian Michael Bendis three years ago, Wacker says. "You're going to be able to see a straight line from the Ultimate Spider-Man comic to the Miles Morales we see in animation."

Early episodes — including one with Doctor Strange alongside "Spider-Man, Sorcerer Supreme" — lead up to "Spider-Verse" in the first half of the new season.

"There's a piece of the puzzle that's given there and really eagle-eyed Marvel Universe fans will be able to pick it out right away," Wacker teases. "All these appearances are leading up to a big story late in the season. The kid who's watching every single week is going to be rewarded with a story that really connects at the end."

The Spidey on the show is younger than the one in the comics, so he's getting a lot of firsts still in the cartoon — a neat aspect for newer fans of the character, according to Wacker.

"We'll see what happens when he puts on Doctor Strange's cloak — that's a crazy moment," he says. "And he's definitely a kid who lives in the moment so part of the show is him having to deal with consequences for actions that are too rash.

"He's making the same mistakes I would have made were I a young superhero or my son if he had Spider-Man powers. That's part of the fun — you want to get Spider-Man in trouble as much as possible."