Jerod Davanta Ward (born May 5, 1976) is an American professional basketball player, currently playing for Adepal in Spain Leb Oro.

Ward was the #1 recruit in the nation coming out of Clinton, Mississippi in 1994.^{[citation needed]} He signed with the University of Michigan and comprised part of its highly-touted Fab Five II that included Robert Traylor, Maceo Baston, Willie Mitchell, and Maurice Taylor.^{[citation needed]} Though plagued by injuries at Michigan, Ward ranked 5th in career three-point field goals.^{[citation needed]}

The 6'9", 234 lbs forward has played for Grand Rapids of the CBA, CB Granada in Spain, and Cibona Zagreb (Croatia). He also was part of the Toronto Raptors training camp in 2002.^{[citation needed]}

Lynd Kendall Ward (26 June 1905 – 28 June 1985) was an American artist and storyteller, and son of Methodist minister and prominent political organizer Harry F. Ward. He illustrated some 200 juvenile and adult books. Ward was best known for his wood engraving and is considered one of the founders of the American graphic novel but he also worked in watercolor, oil, brush and ink, lithography and mezzotint.

Ward spent his childhood in Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey. When he was in the first grade, Ward discovered that his last name spelled "draw" backwards, and decided that he wanted to be an artist. He studied fine arts at Columbia Teachers' College in New York. There he met his future wife, May McNeer, and they were married shortly after their graduation in 1926. The first year of their marriage was spent in Europe, where Ward studied printmaking and book design at the National Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig, Germany. While browsing in a bookstore in Leipzig, Ward came upon a book by the Belgian engraver Frans Masereel which told a story in woodcuts. This was the spark which inspired Ward to create his first graphic novel, Gods' Man, published in October 1929, the same week the stock market crashed. It was the first novel-length story told in wood engravings to be published in the United States. He went on to publish six graphic novels in total, of which Vertigo was the last and the most ambitious.