Not sure if you have an answer to your question. I've run into the same situation with the 'black/inverse' question mark. I'm no perl guru, as you will see in the post: http://perlguru.com/gforum.cgi?post=34634
There you will see where I use MP3::Tag to write versions 1 and 2 mp3 tags. If you comment-out the id3v1 calls (three lines), tags for Artist, Albums and Tracks appear correctly in the tags. My issue was with items like Queensr˙che, Mötley Crüe, etc.