The creator of "X-Men" bumped into Wolverine at Comic-Con. After happy introductions between Stan Lee and Hugh Jackman, the actor announced that Lee would make a cameo in the upcoming 20th Century Fox movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," due out next May. "Don't tell anyone," Jackman joked about the accidental announcement. "It's always a big shock when people see him."

"I promise not to try and overshadow you," Lee said.

Jackman, who made an unannounced appearance Thursday at the convention to tout "Wolverine," later said that he and Lee had met before, at the opening of the first "X-Men" movie in 2000.

"I don't know if he remembers," said Jackman, who went on to praise the 85-year-old comic-book king.

"Around here this guy is like a god," Jackman said. "Around here, people see this guy, they faint. Their whole livelihood and everything they're interested in came out of his mind."

One character Lee didn't create, Jackman added, was Wolverine.

But there is always room for more superheroes on screen, Lee said. The success of superhero flicks will continue to inspire new and better big-screen stories, he said.

"You could tell having seen 'Iron Man,' having seen 'Batman,' the writers and producers and directors now know how to treat these movies," he said. "They're not just silly stories of people wearing capes hitting a bad guy. They have more dimension to them."

" ... It's like gangster movies," he said. "There will never be an end to crime stories. There will never be an end, I think, to superhero stories. They'll just evolve, they'll be done in different ways and I think they'll keep getting better and better."

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Associated Press Television producer Ryan Pearson contributed to this report.

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Written By SANDY COHEN

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