This is "Provide Some Answers," which is a feature where long unresolved plot points are eventually resolved.
Reader David B. wrote in to ask, "I've long had one abandoned storyline in my head. It's from Amazing Spider-Man 242, by Roger Stern and JRjr. In it, the Mad Thinker sends an android against Spider-Man to figure out how Spidey is able to sense danger. He then sits down after watching the fight to think how to exploit this. I have waited 30 years for that storyline to close out. Did it ever? Did I miss it? Can you help me find out?"
I'm glad to let you know that there actually is an answer to this one, David! It just took Roger Stern nearly half of those 30 years to reveal it!
It all started in 1983's Amazing Spider-Man #242 (by Roger Stern, John Romita Jr. and Kevin Dzuaban), which was a bit of a "breather issue," as it mostly just furthered along some sub plots and had some interesting stuff with Peter Parker's photographer rival, Lance Bannon, in an attempt to humanize him a bit more than just "Spider-Man's answer to Steve Lombard."
The villainous Mad Thinker happened to be keeping tabs a bit on Spider-Man and he decided that the webcrawler was interesting because of the Spider-Sense that Spider-Man apparently has. The villainous genius wants to study this ability and perhaps harness it in some way. Note that Stern even tied in some Marvel Team-Up plots that had recently happened. Stern really worked with continuity seamlessly.
The rest of the action for the issue took place in the form of an android that the Mad Thinker sent to attack Spider-Man while the Mad Thinker watched and examined how Spider-Man's Spider-Sense worked...
In the end, Spider-Man, being, well, you know, Spider-Man, was able to defeat the android (which, of course, impressed Mad Thinker since he designed this android to take on the Fantastic Four) by basically tricking the robot...
The Mad Thinker plot ends with the Thinker seeing what happened and noting that he will have to think long and hard about his next step...
As it turned out, he REALLY had to think long and hard about it, because Roger Stern ended up leaving Amazing Spider-Man less than a year after this issue came out and thus, whatever plot that Stern had in mind, he did not get to use it in the comic book. Luckily for Stern, he was able to return to the Spider-Man books in the mid-1990s. Stern famously got to resolve his original plans for the Hobgoblin, but he also got to deal with a lesser master plan, you know, this whole Mad Thinker thing.
Of course, the funny thing is that it ended being resolved with an entirely different character!!
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What I mean, of course, is that in the ensuing 13 years, Spider-Man turned out to be a clone and the REAL Peter Parker had gone on the road years ago and taken the name Ben Reilly. Ben was back and after serving alongside Spider-Man as the Scarlet Spider, Peter decided to quit being Spider-Man and hand the identity over to Ben. Ben came up with a new costume. During this period, a few Spider-Man books were launched, including a fun new quarterly title called Spider-Man Team-Up.
In the second issue, Roger Stern plotted a team-up between Spider-Man and the Silver Surfer and George Perez (the writer of Silver Surfer at the time) scripted the book. The art was by Tom Grindberg and Bill Anderson.
Early in the story, Mad Thinker uses what he learned about Spider-Man's Spider-Senses all those years ago to mess with Spider-Man's head and to capture him...
That little bit at the end is, as it turns out, the villain known as Quazimodo, who has taken over the Mad Thinker's android and thus, the rest of the story involves Spider-Man and Silver Surfer fighting against Quazimodo (it was an extra-long story since it was a quarterly book, so there was a lot of story still to come), but hey, at least the Mad Thinker plot was finally resolved!
So there ya go, David! If anyone else has a suggestion for a plot that was resolved after a number of years, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!