No, I'm voting for "formatting help".
Unfortunately, "We don't think html is cool enough" is too long. Actually, I think markdown has some improvements over html, but I'm not sure having two sets of habits is worth it.
It's not a matter of coolness, but resistance to abuse. Unrestricted HTML is not an option for comments, because it can contain Javascript, or formatting that breaks the entire page. A restricted subset of HTML could be allowed, but it would be about as complicated to support as Markdown is. Support for Markdown came free with the Reddit code base, but adding restricted HTML as an option would be a nontrivial project.
It took me a while to find the "help" button for comments, and we seem to have a steady stream of people who have trouble finding it on their own. I suspect that's because it's floating off in a corner you don't have much reason to look at. Would it be difficult to move it to the immediate right of the "cancel" button, instead of the far right, and possibly rename it "formatting help"?
(I don't know enough python to look at the site's code, or I would check this out myself.)