That’s because with “Doctor Strange,” Marvel finally finds its most exquisite melding yet of a comic book’s artistic geneaology and state-of-the-art technology. “Docter Strange” called upon its designers to pull from a rich array of visual influences and build a consistent aesthetic that moves as smoothly as a timepiece.

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Everything begins, of course, with the mid-’60s mind of Marvel legend Steve Ditko, whose early influences included virtuosic Golden Age-era Batman artist Jerry Robinson and the beautifully composed chiaroscuro of Mort Meskin. In co-creating Spider-Man a year earlier, Ditko flashed his gift for depicting the intensely physical. But with Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, Ditko called upon his ability to spin psychedelic art — presaging styles that would flood the mainstream just a few years later.

A half-decade before Stanley Kubrick took filmgoers on an extended light-show trip in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Ditko unfurled splash pages of neon-bright worlds that simultaneously looked astronomical and physiological — are those interlocked planets we’re gazing at, or dendrite-exploding neurons? Was this Meskin crossed with mescaline? The page was a rippling canvas that seemed to depict superheroism under the influence of hallucinogens.

The new film draws warm inspiration from those ’60s pages, but director Scott Derrickson and his Industrial Light & Magic effects wizards use those as a jumping-off point to melt our eyeballs in 21st-century ways as well. While “Doctor Strange” occasionally nods to “The Matrix,” the clearest precursor, of course, is Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” — as these mystic warriors warp Escher-like cityscapes to their whims and seem to be doing parkour across the shards of Mirror Dimensions.

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And then there is the film’s first great effects piece: an extended scene in which Strange travels out of body to get even a fleeting sense of the dimensionally possible, courtesy of the Ancient One (here a Celtic mystic who has fought for earthly peace for centuries). This is astral projection as electric Kool-Aid acid test. And it feels like what Kubrick might have conceived if he a Marvel Studios play kit at his disposal.

It is fitting, then, that Dr. Strange likes to turn to the Eye of Agamotto object to play with time. Because the cinematic eye of “Doctor Strange” reflects an intelligent design approach that spans at least a half-century of direct influences (with nods to interlocking Celtic designs, for instance, that date back many centuries). This is cinematic art that is both of its time and timeless.

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And in that way, Marvel Studios has pushed its own envelope, perhaps delivering the best visual movie of the year.

Superhero films generally come up short at the Academy Awards, with 2004’s “Spider-Man 2” the most recent (and only second ever) superhero movie to win the best visual effects Oscar. Marvel-character films have received a raft of nominations in this category, usually losing to the effects gurus who worked on “Inception” and “Interstellar” (Paul Franklin and Andrew Lockley won for both), or “Gravity,” or “Life of Pi,” or Team “Lord of the Rings.”

“Doctor Strange” is Marvel’s most deserving contender to try to break that streak.