All of this thread is TL;DR, so now it's my turn:
Fighting game. Not a comic. Can't play a comic book.
If you want more comic fans to be buying this game, there need to be more comic book fans. It's a big deal for any issue of a comic to sell more than 100,000 copies, which means less than 0.1% of the population is reading them. The total number drops even lower when you consider that a single person reads and buys multiple series. And very few of them probably play fighters with any dedication too. They might pickup this game but odds are they'll quit when they realize how bad they suck at it and the novelty wears off.
80% of this game's player-base will come from other fighting games, another 15% will probably be gamers new to the genre, and the remainder will be comic book readers. Listing them at 5% is generous too. It's not to say most people playing this game will lack familiarity with the characters... it'll just be from movies and Saturday morning cartoon shows they watched as kids.
It's not that wanting more comic book fans to pickup this game is elitist, it's just that it's mathematically impossible. There aren't enough to have them all buy the game and have a large enough percentage of them like it to the point they assimilate into the community and make any sort of splash in it. There will be some that do, but we're talking a statistical blip for the most part in comparison to the swath of people playing this game who won't know fucking dick about comics and will be 100% A-O.K. with that.
The elitism comes in when a vibe is given off like "holy shit, there are people on the internet acting like I'm doing something wrong by being an adult and not knowing anything about comics." That really rubs people the wrong way. I've got no problem with adults reading comic books. A huge chunk of my TV viewing time goes into Family Guy, The Simpsons, Futurama and South Park, I'm fucking obsessed with DBZ: Abridged and I have like 1200 posts on a Mortal Kombat forum. Everyone's got their girl-repellant somewhere, but recognize that the target audience for your hobby is eight.
Your best bet with this game is that it CREATES more comic book readers rather than drawing in more comic book readers. And the best way to do that is by not falling into the stereotype of the nitpicky nerd. You're in a very, very, very tiny minority, and one shithead can ruin the majority's perception of the entire group forever. After that then maybe the comic book source material will inform the game in future sequels, but until then, this game 98% geared towards fighting gamers that watched Justice League, BTAS, STAS and allllllll those blockbusters as kids... all of them, basically.
But what comic book fans have to realize is that it's perfectly acceptable for a grown-up to not know anything/give one single shit about comic books. And that when it comes to this stuff, everyone speaks entirely from their ass because it's all make-believe. There is no holy grail of the "rational and informed" superhero discussion.