Tampa Bay Comic Con was scheduled to kick off this morning with a bid to set a new Guinness World Record for largest gathering of people dressed as comic book characters.

As you may recall, Washington, D.C.'s Awesome Con made the same attempt in April, but with just 237 fell significantly short of the record of 1,530 set in April 2011 at the opening of World Joyland theme park in China. And like the Awesome Con effort, Tampa Bay's comes with restrictions -- in this case, that the characters must have originally appeared in comics, rather than on television, film, video games, etc. Apologies in advance to all of the Harley Quinn cosplayers ...

The Awesome Con guidelines were significantly tougher, coming with a list of approved characters.

Held through Sunday at the Tampa Convention Center, Tampa Bay Comic Con features such comics guests as Jim Steranko, Mike Zeck, Marv Wolfman, Jeremy Bastian, Cullen Bunn, Mike Grell, Dave Johnson, Scott Kolins, Joe Rivera, Paolo Rivera, Andrew Robinson and Bernie Wrightson.