threeeyeswurm--yeah, although I argued my side, in retrospect I think I agree with you more now. Specially in the case of the word balloons--I have no idea what that man is yelling! It is disruptive to any reader who can understand Chinese.
But hopefully with your help I can get this sorted...
3PU, don't get me wrong, I said what I said because I wish there was a way to somehow convey a foreign environment without using random characters. I totally understand your dilemma and its difficulties.
However, I would advice not flipping the words. Firstly, I don't know if people will understand that its a courtesy (Sorry that I didn't but now that you've explained your intent, I do appreciate it). In a way, writing chinese characters wrong is almost worse than using random chinese characters. At least in the latter case, the words are still chinese.
There is no need to apologize at all. I still enjoy the comic as it is still very well-drawn.
threeeyeswurm--first of all I am very envious of your ability to read Chinese. I wish I had that very difficult skill. Here's the dilemma: I do not read or write Chinese characters and because of this I am faced with the task of conveying that the story takes place in Hong Kong but not having the necessary skills to accurately represent the city. I would ask that you please just consider them a design element. Like an off-model bus or an overly-muscular superhero. Or a limitation like having to use a 555 prefix phone number. I think that anytime you draw there is a leap of faith that the person looking at what you have done will understand the message and I wish I had better skill and knowledge to suit all the readers' different areas of expertise (like a WW2 airplane expert reading my comic and not liking my misrepresentation of a Spitfire or whatever).
I flipped the Chinese characters as a courtesy so that people such as yourself would not have to consider their meaning. People who can understand the characters were meant to see them and realize they're flipped because the idiot artist has no idea what they mean and people who don't understand the characters would just get a feeling of "sense of place".
But I think most readers, no matter where they are from or what languages they read and write, will realize they're reading a comic book when they see the huge super villain with electricity shooting out of him. (Just kidding!--I do get your point about this: your concentration while reading is interrupted by my nonsensical Chinese)
Ultimately the story has to take place in Hong Kong for certain historical reasons yet I am unable to convince everyone with my Chinese characters (that need to be there) and unfortunately I do not have the budget or time to employ a translator. So please accept my apology and I hope you can look past this shortcoming.
hmm... I am not so sure about putting random chinese characters that don't really mean anything... I understand it's intended for English speakers but for people who knows even a little bit of Chinese, it really reminds them that they are reading a comic. It really pulls the reader out of the world of your comic.
Also, some of the chinese characters are flipped... and I don't really understand the use in that.
