Every superhero origin story follows the same basic template. Something awful happens, the hero receives extraordinary powers, and within a montage or two they’re leaping across rooftops in a dramatic costume. Clean. Efficient. Satisfying. Now imagine that same sequence of events unfolding in modern Britain, where the first port of call after a radioactive spider bite is not a dramatic transformation sequence but a very long phone call to 111, followed by a text message telling you your callback has been assigned to a clinician who will ring you back between now and the eventual heat death of the universe.
I’ve thought about this more than is probably healthy. And honestly? The more I think about it, the funnier and more tragic it gets. Here, then, is a bittersweet reimagining of iconic superhero origin stories as they would actually play out against the backdrop of NHS waiting times in the UK.
Peter Parker and the fourteen-week follow-up
Peter gets bitten on a school trip to a science museum in Bristol. Classic stuff. He shows the bite to his Aunt May, who immediately says “that looks angry” and calls the GP surgery at 8am on the dot. The line is busy. She tries again. And again. At 8:47am, she gets through, only to be told there are no appointments today but she can call back tomorrow, or use the online booking system, which has been temporarily unavailable since February.
Peter is eventually triaged by 111, who correctly identify that a spider bite with spreading redness warrants a same-day assessment. He sits in a Minor Injuries Unit for three hours, is given antihistamine cream, and told to come back if the redness spreads above the elbow. It does. He goes back. Blood tests are taken. His results show some extremely unusual protein markers. He is referred to a specialist. The referral letter takes eleven days to arrive. The appointment is in fourteen weeks. By the time he gets there, he has already accidentally stuck to the ceiling of his bedroom four times and webbed a geography teacher to a whiteboard. The specialist looks at his notes, declares him “essentially fine”, and discharges him.
Spider-Man still happens, eventually. But there’s a whole arc in the middle where Peter just has to quietly get on with having superpowers while waiting for the NHS to officially confirm that anything unusual is going on.
Bruce Banner and the occupational health referral
The gamma radiation incident happens at a research facility in Oxfordshire. Bruce is taken immediately to A&E at the John Radcliffe, where he waits four hours and twenty minutes before being seen. The triage nurse is unimpressed by “I was exposed to concentrated gamma radiation during an experiment gone wrong” because she has heard stranger things this shift and his blood pressure is currently fine.
Bruce is admitted overnight for observation. He’s discharged the following morning with a leaflet about radiation safety and a referral to occupational health, which will assess whether he is fit to return to his laboratory role. The occupational health appointment is in nine weeks. In the meantime, HR have placed him on precautionary suspension with full pay, pending the outcome of a risk assessment. The risk assessment form is twelve pages long and asks, in section 4(b), whether the employee poses a threat to colleagues in “situations of elevated workplace stress”. Bruce stares at this for a very long time.
The Hulk still emerges, but not until after Bruce has sat through two separate HR meetings, one mediation session, and a very unhelpful occupational health report that recommends he try mindfulness.
Tony Stark and the cardiology waiting list
The shrapnel incident happens in a different context here, obviously, but let’s say Tony is a brilliantly arrogant Sheffield engineer who takes a piece of industrial shrapnel to the chest in a workshop accident. The paramedics arrive in eight minutes (genuinely impressive). He’s taken to the Northern General. The surgeons stabilise him. Everyone does a brilliant job, because on an emergency basis the NHS is, in my experience, extraordinary.
The issue comes afterwards. Tony needs specialist cardiology follow-up and potentially a novel implanted device to manage the ongoing risk. His cardiology outpatient appointment is in eighteen weeks. He builds an arc reactor in his garage in the meantime, obviously, because he’s Tony Stark and he cannot help himself. His GP sends a “routine query” letter to the cardiology department asking whether this is advisable. No one responds for six weeks. By then Tony has already built the Mark I suit and flown it into the Peak District by accident.
Carol Danvers and the GP who doesn’t believe her
Carol crashes back to Earth near Swindon, with fragmented memories and extraordinary Kree-augmented powers she can’t fully explain. She goes to her GP and tries to describe what’s happening to her. The GP, pressed for time and working a twelve-patient-per-hour list, listens for about ninety seconds and suggests she might be experiencing dissociative episodes linked to stress. He refers her to the community mental health team. The wait is twenty-two weeks. He also suggests she try cutting down on caffeine.
Carol perseveres. She fills in an online self-referral form for the mental health team. She gets a letter acknowledging receipt. She calls to chase it up. She is told they’ll be in touch. She saves the planet three times whilst waiting, which at least gives her something to put in the “what has changed since your referral?” section of the eventual assessment form.
This is not entirely unlike the challenges superheroes face when their entire operational setup collides with British bureaucracy, and I’d argue Carol’s experience with the GP is the spiritual cousin of every superhero who’s tried to get official sign-off on something that is, technically, unprecedented.
Matt Murdock and the ophthalmology backlog
Young Matt is blinded in the accident, daredevil radar sense begins developing within days. His mum takes him to the eye clinic. The initial emergency appointment happens quickly, to be fair. But the follow-up with the specialist to monitor the unusual neurological compensation happening in Matt’s visual cortex? That’s a twelve-week wait at the earliest. The neurologist referral on top of that is another sixteen weeks.
Matt’s enhanced senses are so overwhelming by week three that he can hear arguments happening in a flat four streets away and smell what every person on his bus had for breakfast. The NHS, to their credit, does eventually get there. The neurologist is baffled but fascinated. She writes a paper. It gets published in the British Medical Journal. Matt Murdock becomes a footnote in medical literature before he ever puts on a red suit.
The pattern that emerges
What’s striking, running through all of these, is that the NHS staff in every scenario are doing their absolute best within a system that is genuinely under enormous pressure. NHS 111 exists precisely to triage people appropriately, and emergency care in this country remains genuinely world-class. The comedy is not at the expense of the people working in it. It’s at the expense of the structural waiting times and the sheer quantity of paperwork standing between a radioactive spider bite and any kind of satisfying resolution.
I’d argue there’s also something very British about the way each of these heroes just gets on with it. Peter Parker isn’t going to make a fuss. Bruce Banner fills in the occupational health forms. Carol Danvers self-refers. They all queue, politely, and wait their turn, and somewhere in that waiting they accidentally become extraordinary. Which, honestly, feels quite true to life.
If you enjoy this kind of slightly deranged British lens on superhero fiction, you might also enjoy our look at the video game final bosses who’d immediately settle out of court in the UK legal system, or the deeply relatable piece on classic movie heist crews falling apart during a bank holiday weekend. The theme, if there is one, is that extraordinary fictional scenarios always collapse hilariously against the mundane machinery of British life.
And somewhere, in a Minor Injuries Unit in Bristol, a teenager with inexplicable wall-sticking abilities is reading a leaflet about antihistamines and wondering whether to mention the web-shooting to anyone.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are NHS waiting times like for specialist referrals in 2026?
NHS England targets say patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment, but many specialist appointments take longer in practice. According to NHS data, millions of patients are on waiting lists at any given time, with some specialties running significantly over the 18-week standard.
Which superhero origin story would be funniest if it happened in modern Britain?
Peter Parker’s radioactive spider bite is probably the most comedically perfect, since it involves an unusual wound that would almost certainly be triaged as non-urgent and result in antihistamine cream and a leaflet. The gap between “bitten by a radioactive spider” and “sees a specialist” is where most of the comedy lives.
Is the article making fun of the NHS?
Not really. The humour is aimed at the structural pressures and waiting times, not the staff. NHS 111, emergency care, and frontline clinicians all come out looking competent in every scenario. It’s the administrative machinery and backlog where the jokes land.
Are there other articles on Supazaar about superheroes and UK bureaucracy?
Yes, there are a few. The piece on superhero costumes failing a UK health and safety risk assessment is a good companion read, as is the article about video game final bosses settling out of court in the UK legal system. The British bureaucracy angle is a recurring theme.