Richard Starkings (born 27 January 1962) is a British font designer and comic book letterer, editor and writer.

Starkings' UK career began with lettering jobs in 2000 AD's Future Shocks and various strips in Warrior.

Usually under his pseudonym of Richard Alan or Zed, he wrote or co-wrote Time and Tide, the aforementioned Nemesis of the Daleks and Up Above the Gods.

In the mid-1990s Comicraft, online as comicbookfonts.com began to sell their Font designs as software applications through their Active Images publishing company.

In 2001 the character's similarities with an Australian comic book character called Hairbutt (a bumbling anthropomorphic hippopotamus private detective) led Hairbutt co-creator Bodine Amerikah and Darren Close of OzComics to accuse Hip Flask creator Starkings of plagiarism.