To me, the canonical example of this kind of phenomenon will always be the old Doc Savage pulps. The good doctor surrounds himself with a cadre of people who are the absolute best in the world at what they do - really incredible, even superhuman practitioners of whatever their particular specialty is. Nobody in the world can touch any given member of Doc's entourage in whatever his particular field is...
... except Doc, who's better than everybody else in the world at everything.
(Buckaroo Banzai and his Hong Kong Cavaliers owe a lot to Doc Savage and his associates in this regard.)
Anyway, the point is, Doc Savage is so fabulously competent he may even be a seven-sigma character, with the associated exaggeration to the way he overshadows his henchmen - but then, that's life in the pulps. Everything's bigger there.
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Date: 2005-03-18 08:12 pm (UTC)... except Doc, who's better than everybody else in the world at everything.
(Buckaroo Banzai and his Hong Kong Cavaliers owe a lot to Doc Savage and his associates in this regard.)
Anyway, the point is, Doc Savage is so fabulously competent he may even be a seven-sigma character, with the associated exaggeration to the way he overshadows his henchmen - but then, that's life in the pulps. Everything's bigger there.