figured it out (see previous two posts)
For reasons I can't yet fathom, the view attempted to display itsefl before the object with the NSString was fully initialized. I put a check that if the NSString property was nil to not attempt to display it on screen and it works fine now!
Another trick I learned from the folks at the idevgames.com forums is to mirror text using Quartz by setting a scale matrix with an argument of -1 on the direction I want mirrored (vertical or horizontal).
These two issues cleared, the project can finally move forward !
