Also, Japan and Korea have a somewhat strained relationship still, due to the past. I’ve lived in both countries and it can get awkward when the topic comes up. However, in Australia, Koreans and Japanese seem to get along really well. This comic is sort of metaphorical in that way.

As for the Korean guy; go to any subway station in Seoul and you’ll see him after a few minutes. That look is very popular over there.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I think Ruth sang the radio version of ‘Flame’. It was either her or a session singer she hired. But in the scene where Ruth and Rastus listen to ‘Flame’ on the car radio, Rastus says, “So he wrote your song, then?” Ruth answers, “That would be telling,” which doesn’t answer the question of who sang it exactly, but I think it was her. The logistics of Ray’s letter-writing to Roslyn were a bit complicated. He would have been sending letters to one of Ruth’s friends in San Francisco, who would have sent it or faxed it to Ruth in London. Ruth would then send her reply back to her friend in San Francisco, who in turn would then send it on to Ray.

You HAVE put a lot of thought into this……far more than I did
I pretty much believed the surface perceptions we experienced from the dialogue; I honestly believed that Ray intended to do Grid Life regardless of whether Ruth attacked him or not. I’ve always perceived Ray as following his own agenda and once he figured out who ‘Roslyn’ really was he simply used that to make himself popular again and further the project (albeit making himself look sleazy in the process).
As for Ruth, I really didn’t think she had any romantic or sexual feelings for Ray even after the revelation. The message she leaves on Rastus’ machine seems to indicate that she’s thrown by it and later her purely sexual antics with Rastus led me to believe she was trying to show Ray that she wasn’t interested (somewhat irrationally since she knew that Ray didn’t know she knew about it). By the end of the story the two were maybe friends but I couldn’t see them as lovers.
Having said all that, tho, I love your interpretations of the storyline, especially the little moments that weren’t hinted at in the dialogue (Rastus’ various dalliances during Ruth’s broadcast and her message on his machine for example). Not only did you give me a second way of looking at the story but you also helped clarify a few things that I wasn’t quite able to figure out from the narrative.
2 more things to ponder:
In the scene where Ray is talking about the picture, you have him speaking to Rastus. The other person always sounded like someone else to me; actually it sounded like Pete Townshend!
And was it actually Ruth who recorded ‘Flame’? If so it seems like there’s a frustrated singer inside of her who finally broke out!