Wak Ketok – the first recognisable cartoon character in Malay language newspapers – is an intriguing phenomenon. He represents an early, pre-nationalist awareness and articulation of ‘race’, which was later (after World War II) to become the basic building block of a Malay nationalist movement and the new nation-state of Malaya/Malaysia. He (and his creators) were key players in the process of mapping out and defining the boundaries of ‘Malay identity’ in the context of a very cosmopolitan, globally and regionally interconnected, but locally fragmented archipelagic Malay-speaking ‘world’. With his own mixed cultural heritage and chameleon-like racial character, he portrays the mutability and uncertainties of racial identities, which were in a process of gaining greater definition. He was reacting not just to a ‘modernity’ (or forces for change) of Western origin; rather, he was primarily engaging in economic, political and ideological contest with a ‘modernity’ as mediated by a wealthy Malay-Arab community which dominated the newspaper industry; which led in the establishment of reformist religious schools and in the inculcation of reformist Islamic thought; and, which had staked its claim to represent and lead the ‘Malay’ community. Such interaction between multiple and mediating actors and the implications for identity and nationalist memory formation are the focus of this paper.