Dear Matthew--
In 2003, I read a review of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code in the Washington Post. In this review, the author took the first sentence of Brown's work and made a convincing argument illustrating Brown's poor prose.
I will now provide the opening paragraph of your Ms. Marvel review, and then proceed with an argument akin to that of which I have just mentioned:
“Ms. Marvel, once regulated to obscurity in the Marvel Universe, has become a prominent character of late. Capitalizing on this recent popularity, Marvel has released this one shot. However, this isn’t some mediocre book put in out in order to grab some fast cash, but seems to be laying a foundation for future events as well as just telling a good story.”
The first sentence within Matthew McLean's Ms. Marvel One Shot review offers a by-the-book example of how diction can escape an author. Confusing "regulated" with "relegated," McLean thereby proposes that, over the years, writers have made the character regular, using the word "regulated" in its etymological sense. While this degree of craftsmanship alone might deter any reader with a bachelor's degree in English from continuing with the review, McLean hasn't finished the first sentence yet. As the author character positions Ms. Marvel as a "prominent character of late," he leaves out the preposition "as" and inadvertently posits that the Marvel character achieves popularity despite being deceased, given that the reader synthesizes the first syntactical unit in its entirety.
With McLean's second sentence, gives readers a logical fallacy with the linking of a character's "prominence" to "popularity." Something can be prominent, as in noticeable or well-known, without having an appeal to the general public or being well-known. To support this argument, an individual can insert a celebrity of their choosing, be they political, musical, or otherwise.
This paragraph also calls attention to the Ms. Marvel One Shot by pointing out two aspects of the book that, given a consumer cares about their funds, are par for the course in terms of a comic book: the Ms. Marvel One Shot lays the foundation for future events as well as tells a good story. At this point I suppose we can put our hands together for both McLean and Marvel for providing the bare minimum in terms of occupational obligations.
Well, I stopped reading the review at this point and I didn't even have interest in a Ms. Marvel story to begin with; I just read the clip posted in the reviews section and was so appalled by the authorship that I had to read at least a little bit. And yes, I copied the reviews editorial staff because I'd like them to know that they're misrepresenting their website as well as the product under discussion by posting posh such as your prose.
Written in hurry,
Robert
