Photo by Eileen Shim.

If you happen to be walking around the U.S. Capitol Reflecting Pool tomorrow afternoon and see thousands of caped crusaders hanging around, it’s not because the next massive Marvel movie is filming in town. It’s because a bunch of geeks are attempting to break the world record for the largest gathering of people dressed as comic book characters.

The event, which is being organized by Awesome Con (occurring this weekend!) and the Museum of Science Fiction, hopes to draw at least 1,531 cosplayers to the Reflecting Pool in order to break the world record. The current record was set on April 19, 2011 at World Joyland in China. According to a release, an adjudicator from the Guinness Book of World Records will be on hand to officiate the event, if it does indeed set a new world record. As the release states, “costumes must represent characters that have first appeared in comic books; partial costumes will not be counted; and costumes cannot be shared between two or more participants.” Also worth noting: prop weapons aren’t allowed on Capitol grounds, so leave all your bat-weapons at home, Batmen and Batwomen.

The whole thing goes down at noon until 2 p.m.