Batman and The Joker met in front of the Capitol today, but luckily the encounter didn’t end in bruises and bloodshed. At least, not this time.

Today that scene could’ve happened in real life had things gone south in front of the Capitol Reflecting Pool, where more than 200 comic book cosplayers gathered in an attempt to break a world record. Luckily, everyone was very friendly with each other and happy to be there, despite the many superhero rivalries represented.

This weekend marks the second annual Awesome Con in D.C.—a three-day comics and pop culture convention at the Washington Convention Center. Now in its second year, founder Ben Penrod says this year will be a big change for those who attended the inaugural Con last April. “It’s going to be a lot bigger,” Penrod says. “We’ve got a sweet room full of video games. We’ve got a lot more celebrities, a lot more comic book traders. The whole thing is just so much bigger.” Indeed, a look at the programming for this year’s Awesome Con reveals that there’s quite a lot going on this weekend, including guest appearances by cult actors like Lord of the Rings’ Sean Astin, The Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira, and Dr. Who’s Billie Piper. There’s even an Awesome Con concert at Black Cat tomorrow with Andrew W.K.

To kick off Awesome Con, Penrod, in conjunction with The Museum of Science Fiction, attempted to break the Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people dressed as comic book characters in a single place. The current record is 1,530, and was set on April 19, 2011 at World Joyland in China.

So were they successful? Not even close. An adjudicator from the Guinness Book of World Records was present to tally up to cosplayers and the total was 237.

But despite the lack of cosplayers, the ones who did participate—whose ages ranged from toddlers to people with kids of their own—were thrilled to be there and fly their geek flag. Jesse Fresco, 28, was covered head to toe in white body paint with a blood red circle painted in the middle of his chest and similarly colored eyes. He was cosplaying as the vigilante superhero Bloodshot, who appears in books published by Valiant Comics. “I’ve done this character before, I did it at Baltimore [Comic Con] last year,” Fresco says. “Valiant was there and they liked it so much they got me a pass for New York [Comic Con]. Then they liked it so much in New York that they got me a pass to San Diego [Comic Con], so I’m going to San Diego.” Fresco says that in order to prepare his costume, he got special body paint applied yesterday and it’ll stay that way for five days.

Of course, not all cosplayers in attendance had costumes as intense as Fresco’s. Meghan, from Fairfax and her friend Cathy from South Riding were casually dressed as Commander Brand and Jubilee, respectively. This is the first time cosplaying for both of them and the first comic book convention they’ve attended. “It’s so close and so easy,” Cathy says. “We don’t have this opportunity very often, so it’s fantastic that it’s here,” Meghan added.

Although Penrod and the Awesome Con crew didn’t break a world record today, they did manage to wrangle more than 200 superheroes in front of the Capitol, which is nonetheless impressive. It was a half-assed idea to begin with, Penrod says. “We were passing around the idea of doing something cool with cosplay. And we thought, ‘What if we did some sort of flash mob? What if we tried to break some sort of record?'” So, will Penrod and his team try again next year? “I’ll have to think about it,” he says.