> Markdown in an of itself isn’t powerful enough to satisfy the simple monkey brained developer like me who is only satisfied when the site looks good enough™.

Well, indeed, Markdown is an inadequate tool for that. Let the author use more powerful tools, be it HTML, LaTeX, SVG, etc.

Markdown is fine for its intended purpose: very light formatting, very simple header structure. If I were not that lazy, i would come up with something opposite to CommonMark, some MarkDownDown, that does away with alternative ways to format things, most escaping, and most advanced syntax. The goal would be to have an easy-to-implement, unambiguous, safe and simple subset good for use anywhere. Intentionally limited.

(For daily use I prefer Org Mode, due to its vastly superior support in my preferred editor.)